Dogbert Dog was jogging along the street. Dogbert was a chocolate-coloured retriever. He woofed goodbye to his brother Danny Dog. Danny was off to the vet. It was a cool and cloudy autumnal day – a slight breeze was blowing, and Dogbert wanted to go to the park.

Dogbert came across his cousin Daisy Dogson and he barked her a cheery hello. They stopped for a good sniff of each other before Dogbert trotted on to the park. Daisy was going to meet her boyfriend – Derry Dogswood.

In the Dogtown Park Dogbert ran across the moist green grass and saw his cousin in the other side – Denis Doghouse. Denis was a cross between a retriever and a spaniel. Denis was running around with a big stick in his jaws. Dogbert went up to Denis and they had a good-natured tussle as Dogbert grabbed a hold of the stick with his teeth and tried to pull it away from Denis.

Dogbert eventually succeeded in grabbing the stick. But he good naturedly dropped it to give it back to Denis.

Just then a very messy puppy jogged by. He was Dilbert Dogsdinner. He was a white and grey old English sheepdog. But Dilbert’s hair was disarranged and he had lots of food stuck in his coat. In fact, he looked like a dog’s dinner.

Just then a black Scottish terrier came along – it was Murdo McDog. Murdo and Dogbert had a race across the park.

Then an Irish red setter appeared – Diarmuid O’Dog. Diarmuid and Dogbert had a good swim in the pond. When Dogbert got out, he shook the water off his coat and made sure to spray it all over some anti-dog people sitting on a park bench.

Katie Caninekin was also having a good swim in the park pond. Katie was a brown Labrador. Dogbert was inspired to dive in and have a nice vigorous swim himself. He frightened the ducks, ducklings and drakes. They squawked and flew off.

A beautiful golden retriever jogged along – Felicity Fourpaws. Dogbert had always fancied her. He ran up to her to give her his telephone number. But Felicity was having none of it. She haughtily ran off with her snout high in the air. Why did she not like him? Was his breath not doggy enough?

Wilma Woofworthy was a beige sausage dog crossed with something that gave her longer legs. Wilma bounded across the park towards Dogbert. She had always been attracted to him. Wilma barked an ‘’I love you’’ to Dogbert. But Dogbert disappointed her. He barked back, ‘’No, sorry I only have eyes for Felicity.’’

Later Wendy Wagatail came along. She had a very waggy tail! She wagged her tail so much that it caused Dogbert to stop to have a chat with her. Wendy was extraordinarily friendly.

Caroline Collarly was being walked on a lead by her mistress. She was a haughty white poodle. Caroline always liked to wear her collar. She was rather haughty and did not like to play with doggies who went off the lead.

There was a one-eyed grey rescue dog named Pepa Preferswomen. Pepa barked at men but was fond of women.

A little brown terrier named Hetty Havenofear ran around the park. Her master Nigel had to keep her on a lead. She was tiny but fearless. She would attack a dog ten times her size. But she was always gentle with people.

Then Dogbert saw Goodeth Gooddog with her master in the park. Goodeth was a brown retriever. The man would throw a ball for Goodeth to go and get. Goodeth would fetch the ball and then run back to her master. He would pet Goodeth and say to her ‘’good dog.’’

Cassie Claws was sharpening her claws on a tree. Cassie was a black poodle. She was very small but had razor sharp claws. No dog would dare try to steal her food!

Just then Dogbert spotted Billy Bitesbum. Billy was a dachshund. Billy was a hero to everyone in town. Dogbert inquired, ‘’Billy how did you get your surname?’’

Billy replied, ‘’Last Christmas I had just seen Santa Claus come and deliver Christmas presents to all the children in my house. I was dozing in the drawing room when I was awoken by the smell of a strange man. Then I heard a burglar breaking in. I saw the nasty burglar pick up the presents to put them in his sack. The poor little children were going to wake up on Christmas morning and all their presents would have been stolen! The big bad burglar was not scared off by my growling because I am tiny. So, when he bent over to pick up his sack, I sank my teeth into the bad man’s bum. He yelped with pain, dropped the sack and ran out of the house! A policewoman on the street heard the commotion and arrested the bad burglar.’’

‘’Hurray you saved the day’’ barked Dogbert ‘’and the children woke up that morning and got all their presents. That is all thanks to you!’’

Dogbert was having a fun jog around the park. He saw Will Weeontree doing a wee wee on a plane tree. Will was a golden Labrador. When Will was finished he ran to the next tree and did a few drops on that one. And then he ran on to the next tree to sprinkle it.

Dogbert trilled, ‘’Will why are you doing that? You do not need to do number one every few seconds.’’

Will answered, ‘’I wee on a tree to mark my territory.’’

‘’Oh, come on now’’ woofed Dogbert, ‘’you do not own the whole park. It is a bit anti-social to wee everywhere.’’

A lady was betting Mike Muzzlewet. Mike was a mongrel. Mike was generously slobbering all over her hand. He had an exceptionally wet muzzle.

Ben Bowwow was having a good bark at pigeons flying by. Ben was a Doberman. The pigeons were not scared. But Ben did not seem to get it.

Just then Dogbert saw a border Colley named Quentin Quadruped reading the newspapers that humans had left behind on the park bench – that was his job. He was a very intellectual doggy. Dogbert woofed to Quentin, ‘’Why do you have the surname Quadruped? I never heard that word before.’’

‘’Because it means ‘four feet’ in Latin’’ woofed Quentin pecksniffianly.

‘’How did you know that?’’ barked Dogbert looking nonplussed.

‘’Oh, everybody knows that’’ woofed Quentin with a roll of the eyes.

‘’Er… no they don’t’’ woofed Dogbert. ‘’By the way – what do you do for fun?’’

‘’In my spare time I do complex mathematical calculations’’ woofed Quentin languidly. He was a very, very brainy doggy.

‘’You know Doggish, English and Latin and you do maths? I can only count up to the number of the claws on my forepaws’’, woofed Dogbert.

‘’I just keep my eyes and ears open – that is how you learn’’ barked Quentin.

‘’Quentin’’ woofed Dogbert, ‘’I want to love to London. What is the place for a dog to live in London?’’

‘’A place called Barking’’ barked Quention, ‘’or maybe the Isle of Dogs.’’

On the way home Dogbert saw Claire Kennels tidying up her kennel. She was very houseproud. Claire was a dark blonde Yorkshire terrier.

Peter Pet was picked up by his mistress. Peter was a greyish Lhasa apso. He was an adorable little one and she cuddled him. She then handed him on to his master who hugged Peter like a baby. Peter lapped up all the attention.

Paula Pooch was a skinny dog with light brown hair. She was a chihuahua. She was rather fussy and ran around the playground.

Harriet Houndstooth was a fine-looking black Labrador. She was happy walking along the street with the people looking after her – George, Anne Marie and a little boy named Gonjy. Harriet was quiet.

Bobby Barker was on the other side of the street. Bobby was a chao. He annoyed everyone by barking all the time.

Suzy Snout was licking her snout all the time. She was a Labrador. It was a very pretty snout.

A terrified cat ran for its life down the street. It was pursued by Charlie Chaseacat. He was very partial to chasing cats! Charlie was an Alsatian.

Later on, Dogbert saw a spaniel named Sammy Stinkysmell. Dogbert ran to the far side of the street. He always gave Sammy a wide berth because Sammy’s stench would sicken a skunk. Sammy’s mistress was a very stuck-up woman who was always dressed up to the nines in Prada skirt suits and stilettoes. Luckily for her she had no sense of smell. But she still always had her nose high in the air. The mistress was also rich – richer than the stench from under Sammy’s tail. Now that’s really saying something!

Dogbert was stunned to see a dog named Anna Banana. She too was an Alsatian or German shepherd some prefer to say. Anna was able to peel a banana. She is the only dog in the world who can do that. It was rumoured that she could also open doors. She would stand on her hind legs and depress the door handle and either push the door forward or else walk backwards to pull the door open. Next thing she would be able to rob banks. But who would drive the getaway car?

Fr David Forrester

Titles:

Servant of God; servant of man

Posh boys’ priest

From the Tiber to the Thames

Establishment rebel

Angel of mercy

Father Forrester was the finest priest I ever met. Compassionate, ebullient, intelligent, full of fun and fired by a fervent faith – he had a most marvelous effect on the lives of countless thousands of people. His bounteous kindness was legendary. He won the hearts of even inveterate enemies of the faith. He had the most exceptional ability to form a rapport with everyone from princes to paupers. David was generous in every sense. He was a man of quiet virtue and was no Pharisee. David was a man of immense tolerance and eternal patience. He was certainly forgiving of my puerilities.

Priest, doctorate, unofficial social worker, author, historian and the master of five languages (English, French, Italian, Latin and Ancient Greek) – David was a man of many parts. He was also blessed with a fine singing voice. He was said to have been a passable actor too.

CHILDHOOD

David Forrester was born in Rushden, Northamptonshire in 1934. His father was something high up in a shoe factory and his mother was a nurse. Unusually for the time, his mother worked full time. Almost everything about his family was uncommon. David had a brother who was 12 years older than him. His brother was at boarding school before David was born.

The family was well off and owned a car when that was very rare indeed. But his parents rowed frequently because his father was compulsively unfaithful.

Cod psychology makes me wonder how David’s parents formed his character. David described his father as being tall and clever but someone who wasted his abilities. He refused to take responsibility. David suspected his father did not love him. Shockingly, David’s mother told him when he was small that when she became pregnant with him David’s father urged her to abort the baby. David seems to have been closer to his mother who was a very active and responsible person. As a nurse she was always going to people’s houses to cure them.

It seems that David reacted against his father. The belief that his father did not live him and indeed wanted him dead can only have added to this. The father was a womanizer and David was a celibate. His father was selfish and uncaring. David was the polar opposite. David’s father squandered his intellect whereas David did not do so. The father was lanky and David emphatically was not. Can this also have added to his desire – perhaps subconscious – to differentiate himself from his progenitor? Perhaps this wish to distance himself from his father explains his religious proclivities. He sought to be close to the Heavenly Father. Moreover, by turning to Catholicism he rejected his father’s denomination. On the other hand this was also a rejection of his mother.

The mother is the one whom David appears to have followed. She was the responsible and nurturing person.

As David had almost been murdered in the womb one might have thought this would make him vociferous is speaking up for a child’s right to life. But in fact he was not very exercised on the issue.

The Forrester’s were conventional Anglicans. Their religion was performed perfunctorily rather than passionately. David was put into a Salvation Army nursery. There he became passionate about the Bible.

A bomb dropped on David’s primary school almost killing him. His father was soon on the scene to carry him to safety.

At the age of 9, David was sent to the Duke of York School. It is a military school in Dover. The all-male school was extremely Spartan. Savage bullying was rife. David was intellectually precocious in an anti-intellectual school. He was also well below average height. Presumably he came in for more than his fair share of bullying.

The regime at Duke of York was severe indeed with extreme intolerance of the least untidiness. Independence of mind was treated harshly. There was endless square bashing but little warmth or nurture. All the teachers were former military men. The war was on and there were constant air raids.

At the age of 9 David had what was surely the most formative experience of his life. Walking along a beach on the Bristol Channel coast of Devon he suddenly became intensely aware that God was with him. From then on his faith was no longer something he practised perfunctorily. It became an all-consuming passion. It was redolent of John Wesley’s recounting his heart being strangely moved which led him to found Methodism.

In 1945 the war was coming to an end. David’s elder brother was serving with the British Army in Italy. All through the war his parents must have fretted. Would their firstborn be wounded? Or would he be killed? But by 1945 it was clear that Germany would soon surrender. Surely the brother would make it! It was then that David got the news that his elder brother had been killed in action. David said his parents never recovered. The brother had been 22.

At school David’s curiosity led him to wonder if the Church of England really was the most Christian Church. He noticed that Jesus gave his authority to St Peter who had founded the Roman Catholic Church. David came to believe that the bread and wine at communion was the body and blood of Our Lord and Saviour. He scorned the Church of England for saying that this was merely symbolic. David was convinced in the Real Presence.

The Oxford Movement had followed the same path as David a hundred years earlier: from Anglicanism to Roman Catholicism. David became fixated with the Oxford Movement. Indeed he was to become a world expert on it.

David announced to his parents that he wished to cross the Tiber. His parents were displeased to say the least. They had been brought up on tales of the wickedry of the Church of Rome. It was an epoch in which low level anti-Catholicism was not uncommon in England. Catholics were known as RC’s (Roman Catholics) and looked upon as un-English. To be fair most Catholics in England were at least partly Irish, French, Italian or something else. People said the ditty – the Englishman Italianate is the devil incarnate.

At school David resigned from the choir because he wished to leave the Church of England. The Colonel who was headmaster of the school told David that this was a transient phase and that his wish to leave the choir would not be granted. The army crushed dissent.

At the age of 17 David formed a romantic liaison with a Jewish girl of about his age. Both sets of parents thoroughly disapproved of the relationship. The two were forbidden to correspond. That was an era before most people had house phones. Mobile phones had not even been imagined.

The young lady and David wrote to Auntie Hilda. She was not actually his aunt but the woman who ran the playschool he had attended. She would then send the letters on so neither set of parents had an inkling that the two were in contact.

At 18 David proposed to this young lady and she accepted. It was all going so well.

The letters from the girl stopped without warning. What had transpired? David asked Auntie Hilda. She never breathed a word but simply showed him a photo of his fiancée descending the steps of a synagogue sporting a wedding dress and arm in arm with a man.

The impact on David can be imagined. He does not say what it was in his autobiography. Is this what led to his life of celibacy? Perhaps he could never feel romantic love again. He was utterly heartbroken as a mere boy. He and she never had any contact again.

There was almost irresistible pressure on Jewesses to marry Jewish at the time. So soon after the Holocaust, ‘marrying out’ was held to be a betrayal. Perhaps we should not judge this young woman too harshly. On the other hand she was clearly carrying on with the other boy behind David’s back. Moreover, she did not have the moral decency to tell David she was breaking it off with him. But how could she face it?

David had to do National Service. As someone of superior intelligence who had 9 years of a military school behind him, it was easy for David to be commissioned as a lieutenant. Many people in the 1950s were only semi-literate. Most people then left school at 15 without any qualifications at all. David would clearly have had no problem with the paperwork aspect of army officership.

It surprises me that he never once mentioned his time in the army. He seemed a totally unmilitary person. That said he was always immaculate although that might not be owing to his time wearing the Queen’s uniform.

Before going into the army David sat Responsions. That was the admissions exam for Oxford University that ran from the mid-19th century until the 1960s. The exam was in Ancient Greek, Latin and Maths. There was no English! Someone who had achieved the mastery of classical languages was blatantly capable of expressing himself or herself in English.

UNDERGRADUATE

David went up to Keble College, Oxford in the year of grace some one thousand nine hundreds four and fifty. Why did he choose Keble? Possibly because John Keble was a pillar of the Oxford Movement.

Rowing was David’s sport. Because of his stature he became a coxswain. He was about 5’4’’: the height of the average woman. There was some clash on the river. He told me that years later he was summoned to a meeting of all the coxes in Oxford to be chastised. He was rather nervous about showing up. David seemed embarrassed and amused about all those decades later. I felt it showed how close he was to me that he vouchsafed this tale. I do not know what the upshot of the meeting was but he gave me to believe that it was not as bad as he has foreseen.

At parties David did not know what to do with his hands so he took up smoking. When he recalled that for me over 40 years later he spoke of it disdainfully – he regretted his youthful folly and looked on his former behaviour with disdain. When he had smoked people were only just becoming aware that tobacco is injurious to the health.

David does not state what class of degree he took. This is probably modesty again.

TEACHING

David taught at Haberdasher Aske’s School. It is now officially named Haberdasher’s. Mr. Aske who founded it made his money from servitude. The school is commonly called Hab’s and is situated in Hertfordshire – just north of London.

After Hab’s, David taught at Churcher’s College in Hampshire. It was a county that he was to remain associated with for decades.

David was received into the Catholic Church. He was considering whether he had a vocation.

D.PHIL

David returned to Oxford to take a doctorate. It was on Edmund Bouverie Pusey. Born Edmund Bouverie, he was from a landholding family in Oxfordshire. The Bouverie’s were French Hugenots who had come to Great Britain after the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685.

Edmund Bouverie went to Eton and then to Oxford. He rose to become the Regius Professor of Hebrew at Oxford. A regius professorship is one founded by the monarch and there are very few of those. He was an Anglican who joined the Oxford Movement. He later added Pusey to his name. His family were the most notable inhabitants of that Oxfordshire village. It is not to be confused with Pewsey in Wiltshire.

Pusey House in Oxford is for the Forward in Faith Movement. This is a party in the Church of England that rejects women priests. It is for Anglo-Catholics. They are Catholic in every wise except for papal authority.

David later published his thesis as a work of popular history – Young Doctor Pusey.

ROME

The Catholic Church finally decided that David could enter a seminary. As the cream of the intake he was sent to the Venerable English College in Rome. He was 34 when he arrived. There he spent 6 years.

All the lectures were in Latin. The Second Vatican Council had only just closed. Modernisation was sweeping through the Church. Not everyone liked it!

The regime at the English College was almost military. They had to rise very early for prayers. They had to wear their seminarian’s uniform. Despite some of the students being in their 30s these men were not allowed out after a certain hour.

Despite the priesthood being about obedience, David was a rebel. He went against the rules and he dined in the houses of Italian friends.

Tony Battle was another seminarian there. He became a close friend of David’s. Indeed, David dedicated his autobiography to him. Toby was committed to helping society’s poorest. David joined him on some of Toby’s outings to distribute alms. Toby was of left wing opinions. David had a similar inclination. There is no reason to believe that the friendship was anything other than platonic.

In Rome, David met two students who were later to become the Archbishop of Westminster. One was the 6’3’’ Cormac Murphy O’Connor. The other was Vincent Nicholls. They were both good looking and presentable. For the laity they were relatable.

So many priests of that generation were odd bods – refugees from mainstream society. Some were young men in a hurry to be old. Some were reactionaries. Others were autistics. There were mothers’ vocations. These were men who entered the seminary because their mothers wanted the unparalleled honour of being the mother of a priest. She would decide that the only woman good enough for her son was the Virgin Mary.

David mentioned the lengths to which the college went to avoid homosexual relationships developing. Seminarians were told to go in groups of three at least. If two young men spent too much time alone they might develop a romantic attachment. In the evenings they sat in circles of around ten on tables. No one was permitted to sit on the same table two nights in a row. Again this was with the purpose of averting any intimacy. David did not say whether or not this succeeded in its aim.

In Italy, David became a friend of a male Italian doctor. It was with him that David went up into the mountains one snowy day and located his brother’s grave. His brother had been killed 25 years earlier. The Italian family declared that David was now a member of their family.

After a few happy years in the Eternal City, David graduated. He returned to the United Kingdom.

PRIESTHOOD

David went to Portsmouth. It was there that he was ordained. He worked as a curate in that diocese for many years. His stipend was tiny. He seemed to spend most of it on other people.

The parish that David was allotted to had a lot of deprivation. He did Trojan work amongst junkies, the homeless and prostitutes. He was ever mindful that they were all beloved of God.

In the 1980s he visited Rome at least once. He met Pope John Paul II.

David was keenly aware of the frailties of his brother priests. Some were self-regarding, some were selfish, others were oafish and some were spiteful. He recognized them as being all too human. If David had a flaw it was being too good and too compassionate.

BACK TO OXFORD

Whilst an undergraduate David had been in awe of the Catholic chaplain. He was staggered that he was made chaplain. He had a superb connection with the undergraduates. David did not take to many of the dons.

ETON

I first saw David Forrester in the summer of 1996. I recall one Saturday rowing up to Queen’s Eyot. Eyot means a little island in the Thames and only in the Thames. Eyot is sometimes spelt ait. In either case it is pronounced like the number eight.

I saw Fr. Knott and Fr. Forrester stepping out of a car in the car park across the river. They crossed onto the island by bridge. It was the first time I ever set eyes on David. He was to make such an enormous difference to my life but I had no idea about that back then. David was only 5’4’’ and physically unprepossessing. He was of medium build. The priest seemed serious and faintly nervous. He was about to take on a major responsibility. It was because he was so earnest that he was a little anxious. But this serious demeanour was not what he was like at all as I was soon to discover.

David was invited to say mass for the Catholics of Eton. Fr. Peter Knott SJ was due to retire.

Fr. Knott was then 73 years old. But he seemed more like 100. Fr Knott was rubicund, kindly, tubby, slightly ineffectual and deaf as a post. He was Santa Claus without the beard. His deafness was no doubt attributable to having been a Royal Artillery officer in the Second World War. The Jesuit was a thoroughly decent man but no longer connected with adolescents. His homilies were read essays. He had missed lesson one of public speaking. He never once attempted eye contact with us.

Perhaps one of the reasons by Fr. David Forrester chose to take over the role of Catholic Chaplain at Eton was that he was an outspoken admirer of an Old Etonian priest: Monsignor Ronald Knox. Knox had been raised an Anglican just like Fr. Forrester. Knox had made the same painful journey to Roman Catholicism. Even more controversially, Knox had been ordained in the Church of England before becoming a Catholic. He wrote a memoir of his time at Eton and how it eventually led him to embracing the Church of Rome. Monsignor Knox is said by some to be among the best stylists in the English language.

I am unsure if we were told that Fr. Forrester would be taking over next term when he said mass for us that summer half. He took to the podium in Upper School and said mass. He was only 10 years younger than Fr. Knott. Despite being white haired, David Forrester seemed two generations younger than Father Knott.

David struck me as sincere, energetic and emotionally intelligent. His homily mentioned having been a chaplain at a girls’ school years before. He said he would ask them in the run-up to the summer hols if any of them were due to go to Italy. A few would murmur yes. Then he would say that no doubt a few would have romances with Italian boys. He told them what to make of it if the boy said ‘’te amo.’’ It was a homily about love. It really was the theme of his life. David was a man with an incalculable capacity for love. He was the most giving person I have ever known. Nothing was too much trouble. He was as self-sacrificing and as magnanimous as can possibly be imagined.

It says much for his preachments that almost 30 years later I remember this. I can scarcely remember a world that good old Father Knott said in 3 years of homilies.

In the Michaelmas Half of 1996 Fr. Forrester moved to Eton. He had formally taken over from the very first Catholic Chaplain that Eton had had since the reign of Mary Tudor.

The Catholic Chaplain’s Flat is above Old Christopher. The building on Eton High Street has that named because of the Christopher Inn operated until the mid-19th century when the railways came and the need for coaching inns disappeared.

Ironically, Fr. Forrester’s one bedroom flat was down the corridor from the Pop room. Pop is officially named the Eton Society but no one calls it that. Poppers are member of Pop. They are what most schools would call prefects. The outgoing Pop elect the incoming Pop. Poppers are usually sports stars and command the respect of their peers. They are more or less crowd control for large gatherings of boys. They are allowed to come up with their own colourful waiscoats – all are individual. They were spongebag trousers with a houndstooth check.

Despite Pop being the police for the boys a popper can seldom boast as a copper is supposed to – I never drink on duty. The Pop room was full of overflowing ashtrays, empty beer cans and porn videos. It is a den of iniquity. As I say they are chosen for the kudos they have among the boys and not for being angelic. But the respect in which their peers hold them enables them to order others about.

I was up to Fr. Forrester for history. He taught us upstairs in Warre Schools – in the classroom on the right as you look at the building from the front. The desks were arrange in a hollow square. His hair was totally white and slightly thin. I had no idea that he had once had red hair. His hair never changed length – he must have had very regular haircuts. He was always flawlessly turned out.

I was in a class of second raters. Despite being a historical obsessive I had missed an A* in GCSE.

David began to teach us in his gentle tenor’s voice. It was an eminently listenable and lively voice. His timbre was faintly camp as were his movements. If I had had to guess at his sexuality I would guess a repressed homosexual. I did not guess at the time. In fact, the only romantic relationship he ever had was with a young lady when he was 17. But I did not discover that until after David died.

Fr. Forrester was courteous, soft spoken and in fact soft. David was unscary and not authoritative. But Etonians are well brought up and their captiousness has its limits.

The other boys asked him provocative questions.

Nick Small said, ‘’Sir, do you believe all Protestants will go to hell?’’

‘’Of course not’’ he said seeming faintly worried by the question.

I wish his riposte had been, ‘’No, only you Nicholas.’’

David taught us about the French Revolution. I knew a bit about already. But the Necklace Affair and Cardinal de Rohan were news to me.

He gave us fact files and asked us to think about how we would get the measure of a historical figure. He told us about Louis XVI being an amateur locksmith.

The most valuable thing that David taught me in history is that we must ask about a historical figure: what makes him tick? It was an extremely valuable question. The same applies to everyone. About a new pupil I always ask the parents: what motivates her? It is the vital question to ask about anyone? Is he or she intrinsically or extrinsically motivated? Does she want to pass a certain exam get into a particular school, get a medal in a sport, get elected to something, do the best for her children, be recognized for her beauty, to find love, to make money, be thought clever, make people laugh, win admiration for her intellect, be left alone, publish novels or what? What makes her tick?

David produced an imaginary character and had a fact file for him an army officer whose political affiliation had been Conservative and was now New Labour. This being the height of Blair mania – just before the 1997 election.

I recollect his exact words about Louis XVIII saying, ‘’I would rather hew wood and draw water than rule like the English king.’’

In the run-up to trials (internal school exams) David gave lectures on a topic. There were these extra lectures so we could get select trades – i.e. the top ones. I went to the Eliot Schools Lecture Room to hear him speak. His topic was the Oxford Movement. I had not heard of it before. He said it was a vast subject. He described the various factions in the Church of England. He spoke of the iniquities and inequities of pluralism i.e. a priest holding several parishes and collecting the salaries for all of them and paying a much lower salary to other priests to do the work. David also expostulated the Tracts and the seminal one – Tract XC or ‘tract ninety’ as it is pronounced. He explained that this is why the Oxford Movement is sometimes known as the Tractarians. Little did I know at the time I was having the privilege of hearing from a world authority on this subject.

David recommended Dover Beach by Matthew Arnold for a taste of the religious spirit of that epoch. I read it. Of course, David would have known that beach as we went to school there.

The novel Barchester Towers contains characters who reveal a lot about the Oxford Movement – so David informed us.

I later discussed Cardinal Newman’s Apologia pro vita sua with David. I still have not read the whole thing.

David marked my trials paper. I had unwisely answered a question on the romantic movement in a history paper. David later told me ‘’quoting lots of lines of Shelley at me is not going to get you very far.’’ I earned a medicore grade.

I once asked David why he became a Catholic. He said he wanted a 7 day a week religion and not a 1 day a week religion.

I only once ever saw David angry. In a div (lesson) of the boys said something cruel about another. David was instantly incensed.

‘’You are mistreating someone who is made in the image of God!’’, a vein wobbled on the side of his head.

He uttered those words ‘’the image of God’’ with the most striking sincerity I have ever seen.

I discovered by looking at fixtures that not only was Fr. Forrester an Oxonian he also had a D.Phil. 9 out of 10 beaks has been to Varsity. But to have a D.Phil. was rare. That made him one of the heaven born in my view.

David came across as being unsmiling at first. It was only later that he opened up. The warm and humorous side of him began to shine.

David was caring. I remember on Common Lane on one occasion I walked beside him.

‘Do you have friends?’ he asked me concernedly. Being an odd bod I was unpopular but I did have a few friends.

I was religiously obsessed. I heard mass every day in Lent. It was just me and him there in the antechapel of College Chapel. He said mass there daily usually just to himself.

Once I went to hear mass during trials. David was in his lay dress until he donned his sacerdotal vestments over them. He said mock gravely that people were praying because ‘’they hope their prayers will have retroactive effect!’’

I had never heard that term ‘retroactive’ before. I remember his very deliberate facial expression as he enunciated the word retroactive.

At Eton, David got the Newman Society going. It was named in honour of John Henry Cardinal Newman. Newman had been a doyen of the Oxford Movement. He had converted from being an Anglican priest.

The Duke of Norfolk came to address the society once. The duke was the foremost Catholic layman in the realm. I wrote it up for the Eton College Chronicle. The meeting took place in the august setting of Election Hall. At one point His Grace said the rule against contraception was imbecilic. He looked around, ‘’Where’s David? David’s gone.’’

I remember Ewan McCowen laughing at this. Presumably the priest had gone to wash his hands but the implication of the timing was that he found the topic of contraception so embarrassing that he had run away.

David told me the story of how he was headhunted for Eton. Catholic worthies phoning him up and asking him all sorts of questions without saying that they were sizing him up for a job.

I recall one chilly day walking along Common Lane and falling into conversation with David. I idly told him how I was wearing my old tailcoat and it was far too small. I took my arm out of my overcoat and showed him my how tailcoat sleeve was far too short. He was tickled pink.

David’s homilies were effectual. He had the prosody, the gravitas and the emotional vocal range that is required of an excellent preacher. Of course half the boys were indifferent to religion or even hostile. Some were half asleep and scarcely even mumbled the Nicene Creed.

Scanning the pews suspiciously David would ask rhetorically, ‘How many of us said our prayers last night? How many of us have been to confession in the last year?’ He was no naif and would have been painfully aware that in most cases our religiosity was lax or even non-existent.

Being a fervent Catholic at that stage I could honestly answer that I had. I strove not to be smug and say like St Paul had when he was Saul, ‘’as to the law I am faultless.’’

Some of David’s anecdotes I recall to this day. He spoke of addressing a public meeting. A youngish black lady entered the meeting a bit late.

‘’She had such a smile that it seemed with that smile she could get anything in the world’’, he said zestfully.

At the end of the talk she came up to David and spoke to him privately. She told him, ‘’I am an outcast in Uganda where I come from because I am divorced and in Uganda that is a total disgrace.’’

‘’Oh dear’’ said David sympathetically.

‘’Then I discovered that I have HIV’’ she said.

‘’Oh dear’’ David added nonplussed.

‘’Then I found out I was pregnant and I had an abortion because I could not raise a child when I know I have HIV’’ she said.

David was then stuck for anything to say. So he hugged the woman.

She said, ‘’you know you are the first person to touch me like that in a year.’’

It speaks volumes for his boundless love for others. He was a fountain of compassion and goodness even towards perfect strangers.

There were other heart rending tales. As soon as he was ordained a priest he was summoned to a hospital where a 17 year old boy was dying. He prayed with the boy only to discover that he was an orphan. David performed the funeral. No one came to the funeral. It made me reflect how fortunate I was.

At mass he told us how his brother had been killed in the Second World War. This gave me some sort of idea of David’s age. David also let slip that he had done National Service so must have been born by 1941.

Speaking about his brother David told us that in Italy he visited the grave accompanied by his Italian doctor friend. I distinctly recall him saying of his pal, ‘’he is now a successful paediatrician.’’

David’s faith was unlimited. When he spoke of Mary the Mother of God he would say the words ‘’Mary ever virgin’’ with an especial elan on the word ‘virgin.’

Never afraid to take on authority, David sometimes criticized the Church. He said the Church had been ghastly. Bricking nuns up for fornication – he said, ‘’no wonder there was a Reformation.’’

David treated us to other stories. He told us about his visit to Texas. He did a decent impression of a Texan accent and swagger. David did not like swank or those who blew their own trumpets. He simply had to take them down a peg or two. He was invited to address the symposium of 400 American priests. Then he told the Texan priests, ‘’I can understand why anyone would die for freedom. But why would anyone die for Texas?’’

At mass boys were given the duty to read the Bible aloud.

Van den Berg ma was reading from The Book of Exodus. The gobbet said, ‘’I am the Lord your God who took you out of the house of bondage, out of the land of Egypt.’’ Except he accidentally read it as ‘Eton.’ The boy flushed with embarrassment went back and corrected himself.

When people misspoke David never chided them.

Sometimes after mass I would be invited back to Father Forrester’s flat. He would never bring a boy there alone – always two or more. Perhaps this was for child protection reasons.

In David’s flat we would have sherry. He would also serve us nibbles. He explained that the head master said he had to give us something to eat however small when serving us alcohol. This was presumably so we would not get too drunk. Having us in inebriety before luncheon simply would not do.

These chats at his flat were an opportunity to get to know us.

On one occasion David said, ‘’we need to get George a girlfriend.’’

The chaplain was absolutely spot on. Female affection and validation is what I craved most and have craved ever since. But he did not act as a dating agency.

I subsequently found out that he later started to function as a dating agency. He honestly set boys up on dates with suitable girls! The inappropriacy of this, as it would now be seen, would be a barring offence. Of course he was simply making people happy.

It does not seem to have crossed David’s mind that a few boys might prefer a same sex relationship.

Whilst having drinks after mass in C Block there were a few boys from D Block there. I cracked a joke about David being short. The others chortled at this low blow. David scowled and said ‘’ha ha ha George’’ bitterly. He was too merciful to me for such insolence. But as time was to tell he was a moral giant and I was a Lilliputian.

I recollect going to his flat one Sunday after hearing him say mass and finding there was a young man from South Africa there. This chap was in his mid-20s and had known David at Oxford and David had invited him to stay the night in the flat.

‘’He slept there last night’’ said David emphatically pointing to the sofa.

It had not crossed my mind that the man had slept anywhere else. Looking back on it I suppose he was keen to allay any suspicion that David had had a physical encounter with this man.

David was not very authoritative. When someone in his flat was misbehaving and proposing to go into a room that was forbidden David said, ‘’Charlie, no!’’

The vehemence of the ‘’No’’ was noticeable. But the wayward youth still defied him.

I recall a boy two years below me suffered the death of his father. The boys was about 14 when this happened. David had a mass card for the deceased on his mantelpiece. He always showed the greatest and most genuine sympathy for those who were in mourning.

Curiously, despite being fond of David and growing to respect him immensely, it was while I knew David that I came to be an atheist. But this led to no diminution in my regard for the priest.

I was called upon to read aloud at mass one Sunday. I could not resist reading in an unmistakably scornful and sarcastic tone. I was pushing the envelope. David pretended not to notice. He never said a word to me about it. Was he too forgiving?

David was liked by everyone. No one had a bad word to say about him. Even anti-religious people were fond of him.

In C Block we were given a lecture about HIV. David delivered it. He spoke in a matter of fact manner about how this disease was transmitted. He had ministered to many people who had died of it.

On one occasion I bumped into David at school. He mentioned to me ‘’history that you are so good at’’. He turned away chuckling to himself – not that he was joking. It gave him such a thrill to boost someone’s self-esteem that he felt almost naughty. He radiated kindness and positivity.

I told David that I had been horrified to discover that someone I was close to had had an abortion some years earlier. What should I do to speak to her about it and try to persuade her to seek God’s absolution. He said, ‘’it is totally against the teaching of the church for her to do that’’ but he counseled me to ‘’choose your moment carefully.’’ I have still not chosen that moment.

David insisted on raising the standards of Catholicism. He insisted that boys sit a test before they went for confirmation. At the end of mass he read out some names and insisted that they remain behind because they had done ‘’rather abysmally’’ in their test. It was uncharacteristic of him to say such a thing.

I quipped to David that I would vote for him in the college one day.

‘’What college?’’ he said looking quizzically.

‘’In the college of cardinals’’ I replied mischievously.

He instantly brightened into a smile. I was suggesting he should become the pope.

David often befriended miscreants. He was forever pleading their case. He was not sectarian and he would intercede to save Anglicans as much as Catholics.

I recall his tale about meeting the Queen Mother. As in she was the mother of Queen Elizabeth II. The Queen Mother greeted David. David knew that people were not to say anything to a royal unless the royal spoke first. This was to prevent everyone trying to speak to the royal at once. But David broke the rules and informed her that he taught the page boy who held her train at ceremonies.

‘’I think he is a good boy’’, she said in a comically posh accent.

David laughed heartily at that – the boy concerned was one of the worst behaved in the school.

Her Majesty was amused, ‘’I only said I think he is a good boy’’ she said – realizing that David was chuckling so much because the youth concerned was an incorrigible reprobate.

I went off the rails in my last 18 months at school. I was too old for school.

I got blind drunk on one occasion and micturated on the Burning Bush. David heard the rumour. He came up to me on the street some says and told me what I had done. ‘’That was appalling George’’, he chided me but he could not hide his amusement either. He did not dob me in.

David was always trying to help out troubled and troublesome boys. One whom he took under his wing was the Honourable Tom Lumley. Lumley’s father was the Earl of Scarborough. Desite his lordly state, Tom was not in the least bit haughty and did not speak with a particularly posh accent. Tom was an Anglican but did this did not diminish David’s wish to help the boy one iota.

I got into big trouble in my last Michaelmas term. I was imprisoned on the private side of the house. Expulsion seemed certain.

Fr. Forrester was summoned. I confessed to him in the religious sense. He listened gravely – not looking at me. Yet was somehow sympathetic.

The Head Man was John Lewis. The New Zealander was known for taking a very long time to make up his mind. This worked in my favour. For most heads it would have been an open and shut case. The decision to expel would have been made instantly. But David’s intercessory efforts were crowned with success. David was an angel of mercy.

I visited David that December of 1997 when I was coming back from my Oxford interview. He was delighted to see me.

He said my prank was soon forgotten. Some F Blockers had gone back to their prep school and caused trouble and that became a bigger story.

I introduced my mother to David some months later. He had spoken to my father on the phone during the affair. Pater had joked to him ‘’are they building the gallows.’’

I was at first rejected from Oxford. I asked David about it. I wish I had asked him before my first application.

David said he would arrange for me to have luncheon with Fr Tom Weinandy. Weinandy was an American priest who ran Greyfriars. Greyfriars was a tiny permanent private hall of Oxford University. It no longer has any connection to Oxford University.

I went to Oxford one Sunday wearing a suit. I had hardly ever been there. This was long before the days of Google maps. I had the bright idea of walking to Greyfriars. It is on the far side of the city! If ever there was a time to splash out on a cab it was that day. My future was riding on that. I asked directions all the way. Somehow I managed to find it. I arrived an hour late for luncheon! I was so late he commented that I was supposed to arrive at 12:20. The only way to cope was to lie and say I thought it was 1:30 I was expected.

I still made a decent impression on the priest.

I asked David about it next day. He said Fr Tom had said, ‘’if that boy gets two A’s and a B we will take him.’’

Like an absolute idiot I did not take this easy way into Oxford. Such is the folly of youth! As it happens I got into Oxford anyway and to a far superior college. It is odd how right the wrong decision can be.

A few months after I left I was back to sort out my UCAS form.

Peter Mandelson was due to speak. I waited at the arch into Weston’s Yard.

David did not want me there. He jokingly said go away. Then he said let’s all kick George. He pretended to kick me.

I had a camera and suggested taking a photo of Mandelson. David told me not to so I did not.

Mandelson was then one of the most prominent cabinet ministers. He got out of his ministerial car and I shook his hands along with the others.

I went to the talk that Mandelson gave.

I met David again in Oxford in early 2003. He was very pleasantly surprised to see me.

I once heard a man in his 20s say he wanted to meet 17 year old girls at university. David chided him, ‘’you sound like a paedophile.’’

We discussed my housemaster Mr. Woodcock. Woodcock had stood down after only 6 years in charge of a house. 14 years is the usual term. He had been having an affair with the school nurse. This was setting an immoral example. He soon left the school.

David said ‘’I think Mr. Woodcock was ashamed’’ – he disliked everyone knowing what he had been up to.

Fr. Forrester also spoke about the new head master. He had introduced a rule whereby anyone caught smoking in the house was suspended first time and expelled for the second offence. When he told me this David put his left index finger across his upper lip in indication of a moustache and raised his right arm straight at a 45 degree angle for a derisory sieg heil – saying that the headmaster was a tyrant.

I went back to Eton for the Fourth of June in 2004. David was just about to retire. I rang the doorbell of his flat. He was in his dressing gown – about to have a shower. But we had a pleasant though brief chat.

AFTER ETON

David later worked at Woldingham School. He was chaplain but did not teach.

I was in email correspondence with David in 2007. I told him of my hair raising behaviour. He wrote, ‘’I hope you know what you are doing.’’

I should have written to him more in dark times.

In 2008 David fully retired.

I lost access to my email account in 2014.

In 2014 I went back to Eton. At the railway station I serendipitously saw David being accompanied by a young man. I was taken aback but elated.

‘’I know you but I do not remember your name’’, he said with flat affect.

It was the last time I ever saw him. How I wish I had taken his details.

In 2009 David penned his memoir. It is a book of lucidity and worth. There are some amusing episodes and poignant ones too. The book has pace and its lyricism rings out. I can hear David saying it. He has a gift for laying someone bare in but a few sentences. It was a revelation to see him describe some women as attractive. David was correct about the head master of Eton for most of his time: John Lewis. Mr. Lewis was gauche. One of his worst moments was when in School Hall Assembly he told B Block and C Block about how he went to the Tower of London to see the ceremony of the keys. There was a lack of emotional intelligence to Mr. Lewis. I thought it was a mildly interesting vignette but the delivery was clumsy and went down very badly with the hardened cynics who were the audience. He also related this tale in chambers to the beaks (teachers) who reacted similarly.

I later discovered that David had been in Abingdon in 2010. If only I had known. I was very close at the time.

David’s liberality remained undimmed. In Oxford one day he was wandering with a penniless young seminarian. David bought him a pair of shoes impulsively. He would do anything to make people happy.

CONCLUSION

David was the most loving person I have ever known. What a wonderful father figure he was. He was goodness itself.

David was totally committed to his vows. There was never a whisper about him ever doing anything immoral.

David was the most honourable person I ever knew. How I wish he could know how much I love him. I regret that I never hugged him.

I wanted to weep to purge myself of my grief for him. But when I read an account of his death it moved me to tears.

How I wish there is a heaven for him to go to.

 

It was a grey and grim January. I was in London and between jobs: story of my life. An oligarch’s tutor is a happy one but it is also an unstable one. Jobs are short term and insecure.

An agency told me about a job in Switzerland, ‘’they are a Greek-British family and they divide their time between London and Gstaad. A brother and sister both aged 7. Might you be interested?’’ said a pukka young man on the phone.

My financial situation was such that I would have been ‘interested’ even if it had been in Afghanistan. Plus the money in this London-Gstaad job was very alluring. In fact the pupils were much too young for me to tutor effectively. But I thought it smart not to divulge that. They arranged for the father to call me.

One afternoon I was pottering around Richmond-upon-Thames. I knew the phone call was due. I darted into Caffe Nero to be out of the drizzle. I was phoned by the father – Mr. Papathomas. He spoke with a typical middle class London accent. It was not Cockney and not quite RP.

‘’Hello, George how are you?’’ said the man.

‘’I am very well thank you, Mr. Papathomas. And how are you?’’ I replied trying to sound upbeat and deferential at the same time.

He quizzed me a bit about my experience and my attitude to tutoring pupils.

‘’I can do proper sit down lessons. There can be songs and games and silly dances. I can get down on the carpet to play with them. Would you prefer a tutor to be serious and grown up or to meet the children on their own level?’’, I inquired cautiously.

‘’There is room for a bit of both I think’’, said Mr. P sounding fascinated.

‘’I am very innovative. My approach is to get to know the pupils – what makes them tick. I find out what their strengths are and what the areas they really need to develop are. In my first year of teaching an older colleague said to me that everyone has at least one topic he or she likes to speak about. Find out what that is and you can always connect with that person by asking the person to speak about that pet topic. I give ample praise and encouragement as well as practical guidance about how to get better – I give examples. I have lots of mnemonics to help them. If they make a mistake I sometimes let it drift so as not to be too discouraging. When it comes to correction it is best if they can self-correct – I would ask them is this word really spelt correctly? Most of the time the child will see that it is not and he or she will correct it. I only correct it if the child cannot.’’

‘’You are very personable I can tell that just by speaking to you’’ said Mr. P.

After 20 minutes it was decided – I would come out for a trial.

A few days later I got myself to Farnborough by train. Farnborough has the UK’s main private airport – i.e. private jets only. I had seen on the map that the airport was not too far from the railway station. I considered walking. I am glad that I splashed out on a cab in the end.

I arrived at the security barrier gate to the airport. The uniformed little middle aged jobsworth had to ask me for some special code number to be let in. This I gave.

Into the airport terminal. It was in many ways an ordinary airport terminal just that it was very small and there were only about 10 passengers there. None of them were young.

There was a camp middle aged concierge in a well pressed grey suit with red and white stripy tie, gelled mid brown hair and, if I am not mistaken, very discrete makeup. He could have been Dale Winton’s catamite.

‘’Is there anything I can do for you this morning sir?’’ he sibilated poised over me with this hands clasp in a servile attitude.

‘’Yes, please could you iron this shirt?’’, I handed one to him from my bag.

He duly returned with it a few minutes later and it was well ironed.

It was getting to departure time. I was having trouble concentrating on my law book. Then along came a bluff and heavyset man in his 50s with greying hair. He wore a ski jacket and a rumpled dark blue suit beneath it.

‘’Excuse me sir are you Mr. Papathomas?’’ I inquired anxiously.

‘’No, but I am flying him’’ the man replied in a detectable Dutch accent.

In a few minute the concierge came up to me and told me there was a car to take me to the plane. I duly left by car and in a minute it drew up at the 10 seater business jet on the runway. At the door of the jet a very slim and very pretty young air hostess greeted me. She was almost 6 foot tall in heels. Her hair was as jet black as her nails and lipstick were blood red. This contrasted almost jarringly with her snow white complexion. She was perhaps too heavily made-up.

‘’Good morning and welcome on board’’, her soprano voice said in a very strong French accent.

‘’Bonjour je vous empris’’, I replied. She was crestfallen that I had identified her as French instantly.

I boarded the jet: it was limpid and smelt aromatic. I found my seat. The door to the cockpit was open and the plump pilot from the Netherlands foostered with his controls. I was once told by an airline pilot that the pilot is just there to reassure the passengers. The whole thing is run on autopilot. One day airlines will start to fly passengers on pilotless planes. But would you board a plane without a pilot?

In a minute two more men climbed into the jet. There was a short, thin bald man of about 60 – he shorted Mr. McGoo glasses and a brown polo neck.

‘’Hello George’’ he said very quietly.

‘’Good morning are you Mr. Papathomas?’’ I said expectantly shaking his bony hand.

‘’Yes, yes’’ he said casually and then looked away.

He was accompanied by an overweight 50 something bearded man with whom he spoke French. The other man did not even glance at me and it was plain to me that he did not wish to be greeted by me.

Within seconds we were taxing down the runway. Taking off in a tiny plane is so much more exhilarating than taking off in an ordinary sized commercial passenger plane. One feels the takeoff so much more viscerally. The whiz down the runway is very brief and then it is up, up and away. It took only 30 seconds to see the green fields laid out lack a rug beneath us.

Mr. Papathomas and his interlocutor spoke sotto voce in French the whole way. I speak the language very well. I took my cue from them. This was patently not a conversation in which I should participate. They were discussing delicate business matters.

I relaxed into the flight. Soon I was dozing. I awoke later as the air hostess served sushi.

It was only an hour later when we came in over the snowy Swiss Alps and landed in a drizzling Berne.

Again a car took us to the terminal. At passport control we were the only three people.

The other man bade farewell at that point.

I was out of the building with Mr. Papathomas and heading towards his car. I relaxed into it and chatted to him amiably.

His car in the car park was a space age one. It was very low and aerodynamic. I tried to open the door.

‘’It opens vertically’’ he said softly. So it did.

I saw into the motor. My feet were almost at ground level in this 2 seater.

‘’I have always been into fast cars, fast boats, fast this that and the other’’ he explained.

‘’I see’’, I said deferentially.

‘’Let me tell you. My wife and I – we are Greek. But I was born in London. She was born in Cyprus but came out when she was little. Anyway we were unable to have children. So we adopted a Russian boy and girl from birth. They are not natural sister and brother. They were born only 6 months apart. They know that they are adopted but they do not understand it yet’’, he kept his eyes on the road.

We sped through lovely Swiss landscape. The oncoming darkness hardly dimmed the splendor of the pine forests, the icy rivers and the snow covered fields. There were some classic wooden Swiss chalets. Being Switzerland everything was spotless. It is a land of narrow dales and steep mountains. There were numberless sharp twists and turns to negotiate.

At last we came to a large hotel in the middle of a luxury resort town named Gstaad. I was let out by him and told to go and check-in. A room had been reserved. He would be back for me in the morning. I did as I was instructed.

There was another strikingly nubile young lady on reception. She had a face with skin so perfect it was as if she had never frowned. She was tall and thin without being too thin. She wore a perfectly while blouse and disappointingly demure black trousers.

‘’Bon soir. J’ai une reservation sur le nom de Callaghan’’, I said essaying to suppress by RP accent.

She tapped something into the computer. ‘’Yes, I can see Mr. Callaghan’’ she said in English in her Swiss-French accent, ‘’Mr. Papathomas has reserved for you?’’

My public school accent had betrayed me.

In a minute I was up in my room. It was not large but it was very comfortable. There were bare wooden walls. They were going for an old style Swiss aesthetic.

Later I went downstairs to dine. I ordered a Swiss steak.

It was about to come when I got a call. Change of plan. I was to come to the house that evening. Otherwise I would have almost no time to meet the children next morning. Be outside the hotel in 10 minutes.

I informed the head waiter that I would not be eating the steak after all.

‘’Ok but you still have to pay for it – it cooked now’’ said the thickset middle aged man in flawless English. I signed for it and dashed off.

I was outside the hotel. The night sky was snowing silently.

I looked out across the deserted streets. There were many fine looking hotels and houses shining.

A mini bus drew up. Out of it stepped a plump, swarthy, middle aged man – his black hair was flecked with grey and he was clean-shaven. Stupidly I ignored him.

‘’Good evening – excuse me. Is your name George?’’ he said in a Greek accent?

‘’Yes, it is. Are you from Mr. Papathomas?’’, I asked eagerly.

A moment later I was in the van and we were winding out way up the snowy mountain to their mansion.

Five minute later we came to some low metals. Gates. They opened slowly. In we drove. I was let out by a large house.

Ding dong. I pressed the bell.

A good looking blonde lady of about 35 opened it. She was of ordinary height and was on the slim side.

‘’Hello George and good evening my name is Katerina’’ she said in a cute German accent.

‘’Gruezi! Guten Abend gnadige Frau. Wie geht es ihnen?’’, I said as I shook her manicured hand.

‘’Vielen gut danke. Aber ich bine eine Deutschin und nicht eine Schweizer Deutscherin’’ she corrected me.

I had used the Swiss-German salutation and not the Standard German one.

There was a lion skin rug in the entrance hall. I am sure it was genuine.

There was a stone floor. The place was finely furnished and everything seemed new but for some well-preserved antiques.

I was ushered into the drawing room. Several people milled around.

Mr. Papathomas introduced me to his wife.

Mrs. Papathomas was about the same vintage as her spouse. She had had cosmetic surgery. The affect was not displeasing. She was a slender and short woman dressed in camel colours. Her dark blonde locks were carefully tied back.

‘’Meet Jamal’’ said Mrs. Papathomas.

She introduced me to a mixed race black-white man of about 30. He stoop 6’4’’ and his enormous muscles showed through his clothes.

Jamal’s iron fist pumped me. He was a very forward and immensely self-assured chap.

‘’I am their personal trainer. People said that they did not get enough exercise in when they travel. So I set up a new programme – travel with your trainer’’, he said loudly.

Jamal was all positivity. I had been a trifle anxious but he relaxed me.

I often made decorously self-deprecating remarks. He always told me I was too hard on myself.

I was introduced to two Italian architects. She was in her 50s and he was in her 40s. It happened to be the lady’s birthday. She was tall and had mid brown curly hair – blatantly died. She was rather tanned. The man was palish and had a thin beard and receding hairline. I conversed relaxedly with them in Italian. I was unsure if they were a couple. Later I discovered that they were not.

I met a shortish Cypriot man in a blue blazer and red silken tie – his whole outfit was by far the most formal of anyone there. He was about 40, tubby and had dense jet black hair.

His wife was a blonde Russian woman who was easily 10 years younger than him. Her English was limited so we spoke in my bad Russian. I have never mastered the anfractuosities of Russian accidence. Russian grammatical cases are still a mystery to me.

Finally I was brought around the corner into another drawing room with a woolly white rug on the floor. I met a dark skinned young Greek woman who was a teacher. Her English was excellent.

The Greek teacher said, ‘’I do some Greek lessons with the kids. If they take on you then you will do English. Ok, Mr. Papathomas said to try and engage with them now.’’

I got down onto the carpet and attempted conversation with the children as naturally as I could which was not very. I felt gauche. It was an artificial situation. Careful to speak quietly and in a slightly high pitch I introduced myself and I spoke to the children about the toys they were playing with.

The children largely ignored me. I cannot blame them. How would I have felt had I been in their position?

There was another little boy there – Leonides. He was the son of the other Greek man. I discovered it is pronounced Lay o NEE daze. I had always said lee ON e dass. It made me think of the co-king of the Spartans.

I spoke to the mother about the Greek books there. I read some of the titles aloud.

‘’How come you can read Greek?’’ she was astounded.

‘’Oh I can just figure it out from the Cyrillic alphabet because I speak Russian’’ I said as nonchalantly as I could.

Then we dined.

Fish was served. I had been offered meat.

‘’He doesn’t like fish’’ said the father.

I chatted to the other Greek man. It was mainly about the First World War. He asked how many were slain. I said 16 million. He misheard it as 60 million. I thought it best not to tell him that he was mistaken. He said that you think of the cost of educating a person and then it was all wasted.

Mr. P decided to hold forth. He related some supposedly mirthful tale. I did my damndest to guffaw at the right moments along with the others. He was a decent raconteur but his stories of yesteryear were not that droll.

After dinner the children were to be put to bed. Once they were in their pajamas Mr. P summoned me to their room.

I noticed the images of Orthodox saints all around the bedroom. It was a comfortable and well equipped bedroom but not as enormous or luxurious as you might have thought for a family of such affluence. He told them a tale about his headmistress when he was little. They listened attentively. Then it was time to say their orisons. Before they did so Mr. P. said whatever you give to others God will give you back tenfold.

‘’That is not a bad deal’’ he philosophized in a very soft voice.

I did not share my reflection that if you were donating to charity solely because you wanted a recompense from the Almighty then there was no altruism or virtue in your benefaction. It would have been churlish to treat them to his wisdom.

Then they were on their knees with eyes tight shut, palms together and fingers pointing heavenwards. The boy extemporized his prayer. He addressed the Most High: ‘’Dear God – you are amazing…’’

Later I was dispatched back to my lodgings.

Next morning after brekker I was summoned to the house once more.

I was brought into a side room for an informal interview with Mr. and Mrs. The room was splendidly furnished with silverware, statutes, a marble table, antique armchairs and oil paintings. There were many images of ships including container ships. I got the impression that that was how they made their loot.

‘’We have a yacht in Cyprus – I call my son captain when we are on it’’ said Mr. P.

‘’Should I call him captain too?’’, I said gamely.

‘’No, that is strictly only for me’’ he said.

‘’I see’’, I said a little disappointed.

‘’We are drinking juice all the time – Jamal has us doing that’’, said Mr. P as he and his lady wife held tankard of some horrid vegetable juice.

They asked me for my philosophy of education.

‘’You have to ask what it is you consider to be a good education. Is it just exam grades? Is it to have cultural enrichment and sporting achievement? Or is it to be happy? Or is it to make friends and contacts? You might be able to do all these things but you ought to list them in order of priority? I tutored a lot of Koreans and they cared about grades and nothing else. They achieved a lot academically but were deeply unhappy and often had not cultural or sporting achievements. They were joyless and often obese. Exam grades in themselves do not make for happiness or a successful career. It is a bit like making money. What is the purpose of the money? It is to be enjoyed.’’

They looked away out the window and across the snowy valley below and nodded ruminatively.

The family divided their time between London, Gstaad and Cyprus.

They noted that they found out I had my own educational consultancy. In fact that was going nowhere.

I said by to the Russian lady, ‘’Sledyushi raz mi govorim po russki’’.

She was thrilled to hear someone speak her native tongue however poorly.

Then it was into the minibus with Jamal, the children and a chubby British nanny. The brunette nanny said hardly a word but smiled like a Cheshire cat.

I was being driven to Geneva Airport. I am unsure where they were bound for.

I tried to speak to the children a little. We counted in French. I told them about the Swiss Flag when we saw it – being only one of two perfectly square ones in the world. They found this supremely dull. It was plain to me that I had failed to connect with them.

Jamal was very full of himself. He spoke of his constant partying in the United States – of flying back just for one night of it.

We drove down the valleys and the snow thinned out. There were some brown fields and some deciduous forests quite bereft of verdure. At length with came to the shimmering surface of Lake Geneva. It made me think of Le Rosey – the most expensive school in the world. It has campuses in Gstaad for skiing and one by Lake Geneva for the summer. We had driven between them in an hour. I had applied their once speculatively.

Oligarch’s tutor or Educating Nikita

For several years I bestrode the world tutoring the children of the rich and infamous. The names have been changed to protect the guilty. It was a life of five star hotels, superyachts and VIP entrances. These billionaires moved me from one country to another at a few hours’ notice. This made it impossible to have a long term relationship. Therefore, seducing nannies and maids became my specialist subject. I did this partially on account of being a roue. But it was not mere libertinism drove me to such courses. I was having to spend long periods of time along with the son of the household who was often in his early teens. Methought it sage to prove to the family that I am incorrigibly heterosexual. I was working in surveillance societies: Azerbaijan, Turkey, Russia, Kazakhstan and the UAE. A family would be much more comfortable with me spending a lot of time alone with their son if they knew that their son was totally safe with me. Do not infer from this that I am impliedly accusing gay men of being unsafe with minors. I am merely commenting that such a view is not uncommon in some of the countries I worked in. I had to assume that everything I said and did would be reported to the parents. Therefore even an advance on a lady that was rebuffed would be reported back and serve as evidence of my gallantry and, as they would perceive it, ‘normality.’

How did it all begin? I am Irishman who grew up in the Middle East and I had a bit of an education knocked into me in two of Britain’s most notorious bastions of snobbery: Gordonstoun and Eton. The few years at I passed at Oxford were as elysian and as uneducative as can be bearing in mind that my time there was spent getting hammered, making mostly failed attempts to score and engaging in ill-judged flights of right wing rhetoric. It was the Millennium. The economy was turbocharged, mortgages were easy to come by and salaries were good. It would ever be thus. With Eton and Oxford behind me a golden future was assured me: or so I thought. To continue this life of bookish debauchery I foolishly thought the best option was to teach in British public schools. I was about to have a very painful collision with reality.

Coaching rugger to some malco-ordinated asthmatics, essaying to impart the intricacies of appeasement to Year 10 and staring down the long barrel of involuntary celibacy in rural North Yorkshire palled. I grew weary of being interrupted a hundred times a day ‘’please be quiet.’’ I disliked lying on reports and pretending idlers are good pupils and being excoriated by tyrannical control freaks who call themselves Directors of Studies and school inspectors. I made the astonishing discovery that not every school is Eton. Public schoolboys and schoolgirls in minor public schools are some of the most conceited, boorish and willfully ignorant of the breed. As Graham Greene said they truly are the cream of the country – rich and thick.

For a few years I struggled unavailingly to impart knowledge and virtuosities to the offspring of haute bourgeoisie. The results were indifferent. My decent income afforded me the opportunity to indulge in my hobby of travel. I had conceived and ill-conceived ambition to visit 100 countries by the time I was 30. This involved me visiting anus mundi (Karachi) – don’t! I sometimes asked myself – why do I do this to myself? I was often lonely and dispirited on these tedious trips. I would have been far happier had I got myself a long term bird.

By a set of curious chances I worked in Romania: don’t!

Bucharest is a cheap imitation of Moscow. Some of the buildings are smaller scale models of Moscow buildings. It has totalitarian town planning and architecture. The same held true of other places I worked: Baku and Astana. But as I was in a copy of the USSR; why not see the real thing?

And so it came to pass that I tired of Dacia and penury. The chance came to work in a benzine republic called Azerbaijan.

When I was 7 mother had read me a good on Vladimir Ilyich Lenin. I was scintillated. The book limned the leader of the October Revolution as a moral titan: fearless, cerebral, visionary and the emancipator of the downtrodden masses. His mass murders were not even mentioned in passing. But as a child I started to find the Soviet Union enthralling. I had a child’s atlas. It said that the USSR consisted of three countries – Russia, Kazakhstan and Siberia. I know that was oversimplified but it was aimed at little children.

The Soviet Union offered an alternative civilization. It could have all turned out so very differently. When I was little the Cold War was very much on. No one realized it would come to an abrupt end. In the early 1990s the dissolution of the USSR led to several wars.

AZERBAIJAN

I flew into Baku one sweltering September evening. I was greeted by a morbidly obese red bearded Afrikaaner. The elephant – as he was unaffectionately known – had built his career teaching in schools far from his native Orange Free State. He was known by that unflattering soubriquet on account of his elephantine proportions and that he hailed from Africa. He had taken over a British school in Azerbaijan. It was his vengeance for the Boer War!

The British school was perhaps the most mismanaged school this side of hell. But it was well paid. That was the first time working in the former USSR. The school was run by a business manager named Besti – more like beastie. She was a modern version of Rosa Kleb – the female anti-hero from the James Bond film ‘From Russia with love.’ This presumable female was hideous physically and even worse in personality. She was a disgrace to womankind.

Azerbaijan is the hick version of Turkey but with strong Russian influence. The Land of Fire – as it is known – is a secular Muslim country. It is governed or perhaps I should say owned by a dictator: Moustache the Great. It is staggering that this oil rich fiefdom has regular power cuts. It was so redolent of Sacha Baron Cohen’s fictionalized version of a dystopian Muslim former Soviet state that I dubbed it Boratistan.

After a couple of years struggling unavailingly to teach IELTS and the English Civil War to Azerbaijanis I decided it was time to seek pastures new. I have always been a reflector and often wondered of things would have panned out better had I not gone to that land at all or indeed had prolonged my stay by even a few months.

PRIVATE TUTOR

ESKISEHIR, TURKEY

I was in London kicking around. I was tutoring in a desultory fashion. I got some casual work in a Korean hagwon (‘’study institute’’). This one was so undistinguished that it has since gone bust. Trying to make a go of it with Korean pupils. They are the best I have ever had. I hate to be nationally prejudiced. Ductile, cerebral and industrious – they are ideal. I was fortunate that none of them resorted to Cho Sun Hwee behaviour.

On Gumtree my little eye espied an advert for a short term job in Turkey. It was posted by a Mrs. Yuksel. ‘Yuksel’ does that name mean anything to me? I only ever knew one person with that name. It was a diminutive Turk I knew at university.

I was interviewed by Mrs. Yuksel in an up market café in Knightsbridge. She was a very Westernised Turkish lady d’une certaine age who was elegantly dressed, perfectly coiffed and spoke English with only a vestigial accent. The brief was to go to Turkey for a few weeks to tutor mainly a 14 year old boy. The aim was to prepare him for school entrance exams in the United Kingdom. I was game for a laugh.

Have bag; will travel. The job was mine.

A few days later I befound myself boarding Turkish Airways to its theme tune ‘we are Turkish Airlines we are globally yours’ – it was an annoyingly catchy jingle. I was confronted by the potato face of Wayne Rooney gooning out of the screen at me. Turkish Airlines had a sponsorship deal with Manchester United in those distant days.

I was picked up in Istanbul Ataturk Airport by a middle aged chubby Turkish driver who spake not the British tongue. My time in Azerbaijan had gifted me with a few stock phrases in Azerbaijani. I offered him pleasantries in that tongue. He simpered. Azerbaijani is the country bumpkin edition of Turkish.

We walked to the car park. It was divided into zones known my colours – green, red, blue and so forth. It struck me then that I did not even know all the colours in Azerbaijani or Turkish.

I was going to a city called Eskisehir. I considered myself well up on Turkey’s geography. But until that point I had never heard of Eskisehir. It means old city. My experiences of Turkey up to that point had been of the spumaceous littoral. I had only once ventured into the craggy hinterland.

I lodged in Sarar Hotel – named after the nearby textile factory. The hotel was plain but unobjectionable. Only the manager spoke English.

The next day was a chilly March morn. I grazed on the sumptuous Turkish buffet breakfast. All that soft white cheese was not good for my alarmingly bulging waistline.

I was brought to the family’s house a mile away. It was a large beige house with perhaps 4 bedrooms, an outdoor pool and a more than decent sized garden. These people were rich but not Crassus.

I was greeted at the door by an olive skinned maid who was perhaps at the equator of his first century. Her once raven locks were streaked with silver. She was no fawning or obsequious sort. She greeted me in German – her only foreign language. That was how I communicated with her from then on.

‘’Good morning welcome’’ croaked out a 40 something woman.  ‘’My name is Elnura’ she shook my hand. She was the mother dressed all in camel colours. She had dyed dark auburn hair and was heavily made up. She was a handsome female but her looks were marred by decades of smoking. Her voice was as rough as a badger’s arse.

‘’This is my husband Necer’’ she said.

‘’Gunaydin’’ I greeted him as we shook hands. He was the same age as his wife and stood over 6 foot. He was lean and fit: a decidedly good looking man with a hawkish nose and manner. The father’s very dense hair was black and he wore it en brosse. He did not speak any English so our conversation was limited.

‘’This is my son Aslan’’ said Elnur She introduced me a 14 boy so chubby he could have passed for 18. His skin was pale but somehow infused with pinkness that comes from being obese. His black hair was loosely curly and bouffant. He was energetic yet bashful in his greeting.

‘’Now meet Alia’’ said Elnura. I met a 10 year old girl. She was darker than her brother and bizarrely wore a shawl. She was a good looking child apart from her teeth being too big for her mouth and she was somewhat undershod. Her black ringlets hung down to her elbows.

My mother’s English was so good that she expatiated on the intricacies of the first conditional and the second conditional. I can never remember which is which and I am supposed to teach this stuff for a living.

The family was not even vestigially Muslim. There was no Koran, no sign with Arabic calligraphy and no attempt to keep to halal dietary rules. The dad broke out the raki (Turkish vodka) every night.

The house was very modern, well appointed and tastefully furnished. The floors were all white marble. There were a few different seating areas in the drawing room depending on whether one preferred to sit soft or hard.

Then it was up to the son’s bedroom. It was wooden paneled and not large. We dove into the books.

Incredibly, such a fat boy was an international athlete? Which sport? Showjumping. That must have been a strong steed to carry him. I discovered that his poor mount was a gelding. The boy has Olympic aspirations.

Aslan went to a private school close by. He had been taken out of school for some time to bone up for these exams. He had had plenty of English at school but his English was surprisingly bad considering.

I took luncheon and vesperal repast with the family. The healthy food almost killed me. It was vegetables, fish, a spot of white meat, beans and suchlike. They seldom even had bread – it was always brown when they partook of it. There was no ice cream, no cake and no pudding of any sort. I could not for the life of me work out how the boy got so hefty on so meagre a diet.

The maid took pity on me. Perhaps she considered me underdressed. She gave me some of her husband’s clothes. You know you are badly dressed when a Turkish servant donates clothes to you! The shirts fitted me but the trousers did not on account of my bulging waistline. My time in Azerbaijan had not been conductive to slimness. They pack their comestibles with salt and sugar. I had a confection for uc inek (three cow) cheese which did me a power of harm. It had caused my waistline to bulge alarmingly. Nonetheless I appreciated the kindly female’s gifts. I still have some of the shirts and that lambswool jumper.

I did interview practice with Aslan. He mostly got the gist of the questions – mostly. He needed to be coached extensively. Giving monosyllabic answers is not the done thing. Apropos of some question he said, ‘’I am a socialist’’. Methinks me meant secularist.

The family supported the People’s Republican Party. That was the main opposition party. It was the party of the founder of the Republic of Turkey. The family said that the Justice and Development Party was trying to turn Turkey into Saudi Arabia.

The mum was a science teacher. She sometimes drove me home in her land rover. I did used to fear sometimes being alone with her that people might think I had made a move on her.

I had some time off and went to wander around the town. Eskisehir is very historic as its name suggests. There is a narrow, rocky, river gushing through it but the embankment makes it more like a canal. There was hardly any green space. It made me think how verdure revitalized a city.

The city is in the middle of steep stony mountains. The land around is rather brown and almost barren. There are very few short, stumpy dusty trees. The lack of foliage is somewhat dispiriting. It is not a remarkable or beautiful city.

Atop the distant mountains I saw some copses and spinneys. Did the legendary Turkish wolves lurk in these darkling woodlands?

There were a few fine mosques graved with pretty minarets and there were Arabic incantations engraven on the many marble walls in the Latin script. I saw this likewise on buses ‘’Allah Korusun’’ meaning ‘’God protect.’’ I am a cloud dweller and given overmuch to introspection and a rich inward life of fantasy. I often catch myself in loud and animated conversations with historical figures as I amble along the street. Sometimes this befell me as I strolled by a mosque. Occasionally I heard the Arabic incantations emanating from the masjid and these curious cadences mingled with my far-off reveries.

Very few local people had any English. It is well off the beaten track for tourists. It was considered Central Anatolia. I found myself conserving with Johnny Turk in German. Because of the gastarbeiter scheme 40 years earlier some people had worked in Germany for a while. Even those who had not sojourned in Germany had often learnt German in school for a few years.

Much of the city is modern, bland and functional. There are tower blocks and dull shopping centres. There were plenty posters of the AK Party – that was the party of the President – Erdogan.

The streets were not terribly clean. The odd paving stone was chipped. The place could do with a few repairs. Skips on the filthy streets were overflowing with rotten refuse. Charming!

I saw a monument to the Cyprus Air Martyr. I looked him up. He was a local man who became and air force pilot and was shot down when on a bombing mission over Cyprus in the 1960s.

While I was there the Catholic Church elected a new Supreme Pontiff. It inspired me to look up footage from that magnificent documentary – Pastor Angelicus ‘’Angelic Shepherd’’. This 1940s programme is a look at the pontificate of Pius XII and featured His Holiness being carried by the Gentlemen of the Vatican on his Sedia Gestatoria to the heavenly strains of the Allelluia Chorus by Handel. Handel was a Proddy but never mind – the church was feeling ecumenical that day or does the devil have all the best tunes? It was a most visually arresting sequence. I played it to Aslan to teach him a bit about Christianity.

While I was in Eskisehir I had my at the time Azeri girlfriend visit me. The mermaid flew to Istanbul and took a 5 hour bus journey to see me. I do feel a bit guilty as I was not committed to her. I performed my pedagogical duties as usual 7 days a week and performed duties to her too.

I was even to tutor Aslan in German. That is despite speaking it little better than a character on Allo Allo. Fortunately he is the only person in the world whose German is even worse than mine.

I did some lessons with Alia. The child had grown more self-assured. She quietly said to me ‘’pig’’. She lowered her head a little forward as she maintained eye contact and called it again ‘’pig’’. She kept her lower lip down after uttering the word – as if in defiance. She breathed it softly and several times. I did not care. I have been called far worse. Even in pukka public schools 13 year olds have told me to go forth and multiply. It was amusing and almost welcome after the horrors I have been through.

The children’s aunt came to stay. I shall call the aunt Turana.  She was a few years younger than the mum but looked 20 years younger. She was married and childfree. Turana’s midbrown locks almost brushed her shoulders and had blonde notes.  She was tallish, very glam and had had every skin treatment known to humanity. Her makeup was flawlessly done – I began to understand why bronzer is put just below the cheekbones. The optical illusion of shadow makes the person appear slimmer. That is also why models pout – draws the face downwards and make the person seem even thinner than she really is. But if I had nothing to eat I would pout too – moody bitches. Who can find sulkiness sexy?

Auntie was an academic in nearby Ankara. I considered visiting one day but did not.

I told auntie that Alia called me pig. Unsurprisingly she did not believe me. She asked her niece in loud astonishment – do you really call him pig? The child freely confessed and was reprimanded.

Elnura’s parents came to stay. At first blush I mistook the grandmother for Elnura. The grandmother did not look that much older than her. That was because grandmother did not smoke. But for being doddery she could have been the same age. The grandparents were quiet, comfy, chubby and as amicable as one can be without speaking the same language.

We watched telly together as a family. We watched the Indian film called Three idiots. We also watched Turkey play Hungary at footer.

After a few weeks we went to Istanbul. We were going for a showjumping weekend.

Aslan went with his horse. He did not ride all the way – but in the car driven by the groom with the horse trailer behind.

I went with the father in his sports car. It was a 5 hour drive through some stunning lunar landscape. The beige countryside was exceptionally arid, craggy and dramatic. As we neared Istanbul we started to see pine forests. The roads were in exceptionally good nick. Erdogan may be a tinpot wannabe tyrant but he did built spanking new infrastructure.

At last we crossed over the Bosphorous Bridge and drove on towards a huge riding complex on the European side of Istanbul. Soon we were there. There were scores of stables. Not having had much to do with horses for years I had forgotten just how big they are. Aslan’s unfortunate horse was in a stable there.

The place was luxurious and teeming with well-heeled Turks. The manager of the stables was Irish. But I did not get to meet my countryman.

That night went out for dinner. It was a splendid seafood restaurant overlooking the Bosphorous.

A secretary from the father’s was there. Let me call her Yalda. She was a remarkably nubile lady in her early 20s. She was blessed with glossy raven locks, a healthy alabaster complexion and perfectly proportioned features. Her quiet voice tinkled in flawless English. There was also a young Turkish executive from the company named Ibrahim. He was average height and build: he had light brown hair. He spoke in fluent English of getting Spanish citizenship and moving to Israel. Ibrahim explained his ancestors had come from Spain centuries ago. Then he explained he was Jewish. He is the only Turkish Jew I ever met. At that stage relations between Ankara and Tel Aviv were uncordial. He was opting to get out of Dodge while the going was good.

I chatted to Yalda and Ibrahim a lot. They both spoke excellent English whereas the dad spoke almost none. My Turkish was very poor and I could not keep up with the conversation.

I began to suspect that there was something going on between the father of the family and Yalda. Yalda sat beside him. Ibrahim on the other side of the dad. Yalda and the dad were a little close together. I noticed that each of them had a hand under the table. Were they holding hands under the table?

On the second night the father brought me and Yalda to a hotel room in Istanbul. It was spacious and most commodious. This was the room that the father was sharing with his son. I would be lodged in a separate room. Or so I thought. No, the father told me. I would share this room with the boy. My blood ran cold. That is a hanging offence in the United Kingdom. But that was the decision. Would the father be staying in another room in the hotel? Er, no, somewhere else. He did not say where.

I assumed that he went to spend the night in the arms of his secretary. Curiously, I did not ask him. The boy did not seem to be remotely surprised that his father was not spending the night in the same hotel as us. He clearly knew Yalda. Did he have any inkling of what was going on? Did he care?

In fact sharing a room with my pupil was not a problem. I would really have preferred not to have done so but there was no cause for complaint for either of us. A generation ago no one would have looked askance at this.

The next day the father came back. He was rather tired. It had been a very exhausting night. No doubt his secretary had been taking his ‘dictation’ all night long. We drove out to the stables. There was a lot of sitting around and socializing.

Aslan competed with no great success. I watched him in his white jodhpurs and black jacket ride his steed around and take the jumps. He was passable.

There was even a manege for the horsemen to practice when rain pelteth. I spent some time there watching horsemen and a very horsewomen put their mounts through their paces on the sandy floor.

The father of the family also competed. He was a very capable horseman and had a few clear rounds. But he too fell off at one point. I found it prudent not to remind him of it.

That night Aslan was dropped off at the hotel. I was brought to a nightclub with the father and Yalda was there. I was jaded and chose to get a taxi back to the hotel.  The dad and his paramour partied on till dawn.

The next day we went to a smart shopping centre on the edge of Istanbul. It had valet parking. There I met Mrs. Yuksel – the woman who had got me the job. She was lightly made up and sporting a backless white dress.

There was a possibility of a job tutoring Murad. Murad was the eldest son of an extraordinarily wealthy business family. They were so influential that Mrs. Yuksel said if she could not send them a fantastic tutor it would be best not to send anyone at all. She had insisted that I purchase more formal clothes for this interview.

Mrs. Yuksel was a high achiever and also vain. It is not just that she took pride in her appearance. She made sure I knew that her son was born in Istanbul in the American Hospital. I presume because that is expensive she underscored which hospital it was. She was justifiably pleased with her son who took a double first from Oxford and had a flourishing career at the bar.

In a restaurant I met Murad and one of the executives from the family’s corporation. I shall call it Insaat. The executive was a very tidy and slim middle aged man named Rauf. His short, neat grey hair was flawlessly sculpted and his dark blue suit was immaculate and surprisingly understated. Turks tend to be too loud in their sartorial tastes. Rauf had perfected his English in Amsterdam. He was a very sophisticated gentleman.

Murad was 18 but even with a beard he looked 14. I am pogonophobic but as the beard lent him years perhaps it was a wise move to cultivate one. He was short, slight and his bright blue eyes blinked bashfully. There was some very considerable vacuity and gormlessness about him. But he wore all labels. His shoes were those disgustingly unnaturally shiny leather ones so beloved of Turks and pimps. His clothes were all a bit too loud and appeared to have been bought that morning. His hair was just so. The boy spent far too much time in front of his mirror. Not that he was much to look at. He was not ugly but he was no lothario. I suppose he certainly made the most of what he had. There was a sulky set to the thin lips of his overly large mouth.

‘’So, George – Murad would like to improve his English’’, said Rauf.

‘’Yes, I see’’ I nodded eagerly.

‘’Murad is studying business at university. He finished Fatih College last year – the best high school in Turkey’’ Rauf added.

‘’Congratulations. And how do you like university?’’, I inquired of Murad.

‘’Is…’’ he thought for a long while as you searching deeply for le mot just, ‘’good.’’

‘’Well I am glad you are enjoying it’’, I effervesced.

Murad then asked Rauf for the translation. Rauf told him in Turkish what I had just said.

‘’Friends first’’ said Raud, ‘’Murad said you two will become friends first and then think about lessons after that.’’

I got the distinct impression that Murad was not the sharpest knife in the drawer. But he clearly got a positive impression of me. Within minutes Rauf and Omur were discussing the particulars of the contract and when I would start.

Later that day I began the long journey back to Eskisehir. The father was at the wheel and Ata was in the back. The groom had the horse in a trailer and drove a different car. I wondered why we never towed the trailer.

En route home we stopped off in Izmit. This is a small city on the Asian shore of the Sea of Marmara – so not far from Istanbul. We parked at a middle class apartment block. The plain edifice gleamed white in the moonlight. It was a warm evening as we sauntered up a few flights of stairs.

The boy explained to me we were dropping in on his grandmother.

The chubby faced old woman with a hijab on greeted us warmly. She was elated to see her son and grandson. I got the notion that she did not see them very often.

The flat was a decent two bedroom affair – sparsely furnished and with an all-white interior. It was unremarkable but there was a Koran high on a lectern and some of the Islamic calligraphy framed on the walls. These were indicative of Islamic piety – something that was conspicuously lacking in Necer’s house. There was even a photo of the grandmother on a camel. Aslan explained it was when she had been on the Haj – pilgrimage to Mecca. Her husband had been called to Janat some years afore.

We ate dinner a typical Turkish dinner. The 70 year old Grandmother finally felt sure that I was not going to molest her so she removed her headscarf. Somehow I managed to control my lust.

After a polite hour it was time to be on our way. It had been an insight to Necer’s childhood. He had grown up in a middle class family that was religiously observant. He had become a multimillionaire and embraced Occidentalism.

We drove long into the night. I fell asleep before we reached Eskisehir.

After a few days my job was over. I was paid in cash. I mean literally in readies.

We traveled to the United Kingdom.

We flew from Eskisehir to Brussels. From there we caught the Eurostar to London. I bade farewell to them at Euston and made my way to my lodgings in London.

I crashed out there – dead tired. I roused that evening to fly to Romania. Four countries in one day! Turkey, Belgium, the UK and Romania.

ISTANBUL

A few days later I jetted into Istanbul again. That evening I was met by a besuited middle aged Turkish driver. The chubby clean shaven man was well below average height. He drove me to my hotel in Yesilkoy (meaning ‘’green village’) which was very close to Ataturk Airport and also within view of the Sea of Marmara. I checked in.

The hotel was a boutique hotel with slightly old world décor cluttering the reception area. It was limpid and distinctly Turkish. The place was not that busy and the dozen coffee tables in the reception area were almost always empty as I was to discover over the next few weeks.

The receptionist was a very cheery little man in his 30s. I shall called him Rahat (‘Joy’) because he was so happy. He spoke near perfect English and was born in Bulgaria which once had a large Turkish minority. The driver said something to Rahat to translate for me. I was instructed to come back down to reception as soon as I had put my luggage in my room.

Back in reception I was to wait for my pupil: Murad. He would take me for dinner. I said to the driver via Rahat that surely he was free to go. He politely insisted on staying.

In a few minutes my baby faced 18 year old showed up. He was all shy smiles. He had a surprisingly deep voice for a youth who was about 5’7’’ and weedy. Despite his bass tone he was soft spoken. It was as though he was more nervous than I was. He was the boss. But then he was only months out of school and regarded me as his teacher. He dismissed the driver who bowed deeply and uttered something in an unmistakably obsequious tone before heading for his car. As Turkish lexi was largely incomprehensible to me, my ear became more keenly attune to its tonal implicatures.

We walked out of the hotel. I am car blind. I can hardly tell one from another. I often remember nothing about cars – not even the colour. Despite not knowing much about automobiles even I recognise a Lamborghini. But it helps that I can read the word Lamborghini.

We got into his gleaming sports car and sped off. Before long I was gripping the door handle. Every car journey was a white knuckled ride. Despite Murad’s unprepossessing exterior, once behind the wheel he was transformed into a demon. The cardboard sign with some Arabic calligraphy dangling from the rearview mirror was presumably a Koranic benediction. Could it really keep us safe from harm? I was to begin to wonder. Murad’s driving was so fast, so erratic and so suicidal that it was a miracle that he did not turn us into a shooting fireball. Was he trying to launch his way to his 77 virgins of whatever it is a pious Muslim is rewarded with in zhanat? His driving was so bad that it was good. It was not that he was without virtuosity. Far from it – he was exceptionally skilled. The trouble was that he knew it and tested his skills to the limit and sometimes I feared: beyond. He would regularly break the speed limit and execute sharp turns. We came within millimetres of crashing more times than I care to remember. He drove well – like a multimillionaire schoolboy with a sports car. Did he have a death wish? Or did he think he was immortal? I did not want to find out. How on earth did he get away with driving so recklessly and not have his licence revoked? He was the son of one of the richest men in Turkey. Given the total corruptibility of the police and the judiciary he could have gotten away with murder – for the right price. I mean that in an absolutely literal sense. His driving was so reckless that if he had killed someone it really would have been murder.

We dined in a nearby pukka restaurant. The restaurant was decorated in a tasteful Turkish style with multi-coloured cushions, dark brown wooden tables, tapestries on every wall and paintings of scenes of Turkish yore. Old women in hijabs kneaded dough in front of a clay oven. It was tasty tucker they served too. Conversation was sparse since Murad’s English was developmental. He seemed genuinely glad that I was there. I was going to tutor this untutored youth. How hard a task would it be to be the pasha’s preceptor?

One of the downsides of the hotel was that there was no gym and the hotel was out of order. It was a very pleasant and efficient hotel but this surely an embarrassment.

We then began my two month contract. I would rise and go for my matinal repast. It was a Lucullan feast in the hotel. It was typical Turkish buffet with several sorts of bread, white cheese, yellow cheese, and of course yoghurt – the Turks invented yoghurt after all. There were very low grade mechanically recovered cold meats but not pork. Eggs of different styles were available.

After this hearty fair I was in the lobby in my suit and tie. Murad would show up some time after nine in his car. He would drive me to the office.

There was an office at a construction site on the far side of the city – well to the east of the Bosphorous. It took over an hour to drive in light traffic.

Istanbul is a gigantic city of 14 million people. It is the largest city in Europe if you consider it to be in Europe at all. Though it is by far the largest city in the Turkish Republic it has not been the capital of the country since 1920. In 1920 the Turks fought what they call the War of National Salvation against the Greeks. The Greeks tried strenuously to take back the eastern shore of the Aegean Sea. After all this had been Greek territory for millennia up to the mid 15^th century. In the early 1920s there was still a considerable Greek minority living there. To forfend the capital falling to the Greeks it was decided to shift the capital to Ankara. There is has remained ever since. In fact, the Greeks never even came close to Istanbul and lost the war.

The ancient and storied City of Istanbul is bisected by the Bosphorous which is a stretch of the sea that connects the Black Sea with the Sea of Marmaris. From there ships sail to the Mediterranean and all around the world. The Bosphorous is an arterial route for all Black Sea countries including Russia. Traditionally to the west of the Bosphorous is Europe and to the east is considered the start of Asia. But for decades Turkey has tried to redefine the whole country as being part of Europe. Much of Istanbul is a forest of minarets, a labyrinth of alleyways and numberless faceless flats.

The office was only two storeys high and the ground area was not large. Only around 20 people worked there. It was ultra-modern and very expensively furnished. Beside it was an enormous hole in the ground. Diggers and truck were busy there night and day. This was the foundation for a gigantic tower. The colossus was to be a luxurious block of flats. They had gifted one to Jennier Lopez – then at the height of her fame. They eagerly showed me a video of her there – all dolled up and dripping in diamonds. A fake smile was just about perceptible through several inches of makeup. A banner read ‘’J Lo welcome to your new home.’’ I doubt she would ever go near it. She was paid a fat sum to accept the keys. Beside her was her toyboy – a very athletic geled hair young spiv complete with retard earrings.

The journey to work was always a near death experience. Murad purported to believe that driving in real life was like a video game. If you got killed you just lost 5 points and started again. Er… no. Best case scenario we would lose few limbs. Last time I face book stalked him he is very much alive and in possession of all his limbs.

I would be so shaken and jittery by my drive to work each morning that I would politely parry an offer of coffee. The drive had nearly given me a cardiac arrest. The last thing I needed was to speed up my heart with some incredibly potent and bitter Turkish coffee. But the one advantage of this hair raising journey each morning was that I arrived at work each day in a fantastic mood for the sheer joy of still being alive.

Upstairs in the office on the first day I was introduced to Yilmaz. He was a tallish and tubby middle aged Turk with a grizzled greying beard, bealry eyes, a receding grey hairline and a deeply laidback manner. He told me ‘’Murad is the boss.’’

It was blatant to me that Yilmaz was the one actually running the show. But the dimwit Murad was ‘’the boss.’’ They had to fool the fool into thinking that he was in charge. It was not difficult to dupe an empty headed boy of such egregious shallowness and flagrant vanity. Murad was officially in charge simply because his dad owned the company. Seldom has the hereditary principle been so risible.

A little bird later told me that the father had made Yilmaz the manager of this project precisely because he had a good rapport with Murad. In fairness I never sensed the slightest tension between them.

Murad would only rock up to work about 12 noon. He would clock off around 4 o’clock. But he was ‘’in charge.’’

I sat around the office as they got on with tasks. Turkish tea was served in biconcave cups. They poured tonnes of sugar into theirs. I cannot for the life of me understand how that boy managed to be slender when he consumed so much sugar.

How about learning some English? That is what I was there for. It was my task to get him through his first year exam at university. I deduced from his very poor grasp of the language, complete dearth of work ethic and his general imbecility that this would be no easy mission.

‘’How about ten sentences of English a day?’’ I bravely ventured.

‘’No, five’’ said Murad tersely.

I humbly accepted. This heavy burden was later to be reduced to five phrases. Then it was cut to five words. Do not push yourself! You will burn out. He was not imbued with an insatiable yearn to learn.

I was most of the time in a smallish office upstairs with Yilmaz and Murad. It was not that small considering only three people were in it. They liked to express luxury in size. The place was unnecessarily spacious when one bears in mind how few people it accommodated.

Downstairs was a large open plan office filled with perhaps two dozen desks. I never saw even half of them occupied. I came to know some of the other office staff.

Boran was one of the most likeable people I ever met in Turkey. He was a spare man in his late 30s and stood perhaps 5’11. He had dense dark brown hair – perfectly brushed but somehow this did not strike me as indicative of the perfectionism and self-adoration that I always find so nauseating. He came over as genuine, warm, clever, calm and self-aware. He spoke flawless English in a quiet and dulcet voice. He wore thick rimmed glasses, his clean shaven face was decidedly pallid. Curiously enough his name means ‘’snow.’’ His dark suits and block colour shirts were always immaculately dressed and his silken ties gleamed. Boran certainly projected a very positive image for the company.

Dilara was a leggy Turkish lady of only 27. She was svelte and fine featured. Her gleaming youthful skin had not a hint of a line on it. It was a face that spoke of endless insouciance. When I shook hands with her even a second’s contact proved the intense creaminess of her well curated flesh. Dilara’s complexion was a sallow Mediterranean glow. She had well-cared for jet black locks that hung down to her elbows. She always wore well-cut dresses that reached down to her knees and accompanied them with dangerously tall high heels. She spoke superb English with just enough of a Turkish accent to add exoticism to her allure. Dilara – she seemed to be more of a temptress than Delilah! It dashed my hopes when a few minutes into the conversation she dropped a bomb: she had married a few months earlier.

There was another Turkish woman almost a generation older than Dilara. She was like a down market version of Dilara. This older female smoked and it had lined her skin and roughened her voice.

I never saw a single woman in the office who wore a hijab. Murad’s family was fairly religious but everyone else there was a typical Istanbulu: secular and Western-oriented.

Sometimes Murad would go outside the office for a fag. I would accompany my pupil. I said that I had only smoked five cigarettes in my life.

‘’Six’’, he proffered a cigarette in his only ever attempt at mirth.

I thought it meet to meekly accept the cancer stick and smoke it in deference to my overlord.

I was allowed out on some pretext to get something in a corner shop across the road. Methinks ‘twas a sim card. In the car park I made the mortal mistake of introducing myself to the security guard. Turkey likes to have tonnes of them! I thought it mannerly and also perhaps needful. He might not let me back in if he did not know who I was as I had no means of identification on myself. Every other time I entered the office compound it was in the boss’ horseless carriage.

Some days later I was with Murad in the car. As we drove into the car park I raised my hand in acknowledgement of the security guard.

‘’George you don’t do this!’’, Murad loudly chided me with a choleric expression on his babyface. He was heaven born. Those who worked for a living were subhuman. But even he went on to tell me that it was permissible to chat with Boran. Even Murad rated Boran!

The building that the office was in was set well back from the road. On the far side of the busy road there were several residential tower blocks. In the far distance greenish hills tapered away at the outskirts of the metropolis.

The morning routine soon changed. Murad decided he would go to his gym first.

He would pick me up and drive me to the gym. He would go for an hour session with his personal trainer. I would then get out my books and laptop and study. I had some major exams coming up.

As he was doing exercise so would I. In a waiting area around the corner and out of the line of view from anyone I would do some neck rolls and stretches. I could not do proper exercise. I was in a suit and tie.

In the gym I met a stocky and lightly brown bearded Argentine personal trainer. Jesus was a very amiable man in his mid-20s. His family had shifted to Spain to escape the perennial fall of the Argentine Peso. Thence he had moved to Istanbul. I exchanged a few words in my very broken Castilian with him. We then switched to English. I asked Jesus how he felt about the election of an Argentine to the Throne of St Peter.

‘’We are so proud’’, he said with papal glory flushing his youthful face.

I would dine with Murad. He did not partake of much. He was not a big boy and he zealously guarded his waistline. He castigated me for eating too quickly. I was often ravenous.

One of the few things that Murad gave away about himself was that he went to the barber every fortnight. He had short hair! So we went to have a quarter of an inch trimmed off. What a waste of time and money and what revolting personal vanity induced this outrageous overindulgence. I made it a point of honour not to have my follicles cut more than twice a twelvemonth.

Some evenings we went to meet his friends. We went to a café in a shopping centre in Yesilkoy. It was a very ritzy place overlooking the sea. Because it was near the airport planes would fly by all the time.

They conversed animatedly in Turkish and I could only pick up the odd word. His friends were all very affluent Turkish boys in their late teens or early 20s.  They all spoke better English than he did. Sometimes they chatted me with. Murad always ignored me. I did not mind overmuch. He had nothing worthwhile to say.

One day we went to a restaurant and bumped into an African football player from Fenerbahce Football Club.  Murad and the footballer recognized each other instantly. They were obviously well acquainted. It was one of the few times I saw the Turk looking like he was in clover. The footballer was 6’3’’ strikingly handsome, well-built and possessed of a winsome smile. Murad spoke to him in a blancmange of Turkish and English. The sportsman responded and it was very obvious that he spoke precious little of either language. His francophone accent came through very decidedly in English. I then addressed him in my fairly fluent French. He responded in French and was plainly over the moon to meet someone who could speak his language.

In these café bars we would sit with Murad’s rich kid friends. They would talk about automobiles and football. In terms of their fast paced Turkish conversation – I was scarcely able to pick up fag ends.

I was bored and would look out for the planes bursting through the murk. On the skyline the lights would appear and as the plane got closer I was able to make out the livery of the airline. I would play a guessing game in a vain attempt to maintain my sanity. Would the next one be Onur Air or Pegasus or Turkish Airlines or what?

Sometimes Murad went shopping for more clothes to add to his collection of very pricey and tastelessly flashy raiment. I would stand there as he went around the shop and made inquiries of the shop assistants and he picked out a few garments. I have always found shopping to be egregiously boring. When I was not even the person being shopped for the tedium was torturous. I would like this way and that – shift a little and try to figure out what the Turkish words on the signs denoted. I noticed that the shops were always exceptionally fragrant and this olfactory relief was warmly welcome after the smog of such a gigantic city that was relatively bereft of verdure.

Murad was fed up that I was not brain dead like him. He disliked me moving around and commanded me to sit on a sofa. I did as I was bidden.

I felt sorry for some of the street children I saw. I also saw a poor man selling nuts as he stood in between two lanes on the motorway. It was near the Bosphorous Bridge and the traffic was very slow because it was rush hour. But it was still a dangerous and degrading way for him to earn his keep.

The traffic flowed mostly west to east in the forenoon and east to west towards eventide. They changed the direction of one of the lanes accordingly.

Occasionally we travelled in a chauffeur driven car. There were Turkish newspapers in the back. Murad never even glanced at them. I would open them and do my best to make head and tail of them. My Turkish was elementary level. The boy had no desire to learn about anything. I deduced that teaching him would not be a walkover.

Once Murad sent a driver over to bring me to his house. The Turkish driver as a short and slightly podgy middle aged brown skinned man. It transpired that we both spoke German. He had spent some years there. We had a very cheerful confab.

The house he dropped me off at was on a narrow street lined with large houses of several storeys each. The houses were bright colours and were surrounded by gates and sharp fences. It was patently a district where the super wealthy resided.

At a side gate I was greeted by a 6’3’’ security guard. He wore a suit and tie but he was so strong I could see his muscles bulging under his clothes. He had short, tidy gray hair and a healthy tan. He spoke very good English and instantly produced an impression of intelligence and affability. It seemed a terrible injustice that such a gifted person was in a lowly and poorly remunerated position when a complete waste of space like Murad was in an exalted due to the lottery of birth.

A few times Murad would pick me up at the hotel on Harman Sokak and drive me to his girlfriend’s house. Cansu lived in a smart low rise block of flats 5 minutes from my hotel. She would come out and sit in the back whilst I sat in the passenger seat. I was surprised by this arrangement but did not dissent.

The young lady with whom Murad stepped out was lissome, average height, perfectly formed and blessed with the sort of fresh complexion that cannot be faked. Her black hair was splendidly shiny and reached almost to her elbows. She always wore a dress that was feminine yet demure. She never wore footgear other than heels and always carried a bright coloured clutch. I never saw her carry the same one twice. She exchanged but a few words of English with me. I noticed she hardly said anything to him in Turkish either. Cansu seemed pleasant, diffident and faintly vacuous. She was the sort of mindless eye candy that this boy found unthreatening.

Cansu was plainly from a wealthy family. But they were not as scandalously rich as Murad’s family. His family was among the top ten in Turkey. Property prices in Istanbul are almost as bad as London. Working class families live in one room.

Cansu’s name means ‘’life water’’. I bethought me in Irish that is ‘’uisqu baha’’. This has been bastardised into English as ‘’whiskey’’. I thought it prudent not to share this reflection with Murad!

Turkic names so often reolve around sources of light. They bear significations such as light, moon sun, sun moon, sunlight, moonlight, light of the sun, light of the moon, river moon, moon river, sun river, river sun, new light, bright faith, star and so forth.

Luncheon with Murad and Cansu was a chore. There was sparse conversation between those two and none with me. They never touched in my presence – not so much as touching hands. Whether Cansu’s maidenhood remained inviolate I cannot say.

It later transpired that Cansu was 21. Considering that Murad was 18 this was a considerable age gap. I recall at 22 when I had a gf aged 26 thinking that she was quite a bit older than me especially as the male is usually the older party. Why was a ravishing and effortlessly elegant young lady like Cansu in a relationship with a deeply unimpressive braindead dweeb? What first attracted her to this multimillionaire? I cannot possibly conjecture! I must not be too harsh on Murad. The one thing he achieved was physical fitness. He was in very good shape. Even his worst enemy could not call him fat.

Murad sometimes went to play footer. I suggested coming along. He declined saying in front of his friends of me in English ‘’he eat man’’ as I like eating not exercise. I was even chubbier then than I am now. In fairness I would not have been able to keep up with the game. Moreover, I was 33 and he was 18.

Murad and his family were somewhat observant Muslim. Therefore he did not touch spirituous liquor. The machismo that we infidels put into taking strong waters he put into smoking. He smoked much and with gusto as if to underline his manliness. He ought to have been careful. It can stunt your growth.

As for being a dutiful Muslim – I never heard about Murad going for namaaz or anywhere near a mosque. I know that mosque attendance is never obligatory and some Muslims prefer to worship at home. His Islamic observance was not burdensome and limited itself to refraining from vice. I suspected that in his case his submission to the abstract almighty Allah was more honoured in the breach than in the observance.

The very fact that Murad could have a girlfriend showed that they were relatively liberal Muslims. He could spend time alone with her. There may have been some physical contact but presumably it stopped well short of actual fornication. Oddly enough I did not ask him nor did I subject Cansu to an examination of her hymen to determine if she was Virginia intacta.

Murad’s family were fervent supporters of Erdogan’s AK Party. They were said to bankroll his party. I do not doubt that some lucrative construction contracts came their way in return. Such is Turkey. Suchlike would never befall in a Western country!

One of Murad’s enthusiasms was Fenerbahce Football Club. It is the second best team in the Turkish Republic. Fenerbahce means ‘’lighthouse garden.’’

The deadly rival of Fenerbahce is Galatasaray. Galatsaray is usually the stronger side. Turks imbue football fandom with the same fanaticism that that have in so many areas of life. Football fans can turn violent in Turkey.

Ironically, Murad had trained as a child with the Galatasaray youth team. That was because he happened to live very close to their practice ground. Fenerbahce was on the far side of the Bosphorous.

One evening Yilmaz, Murad and I went to a match at Fenerbahce. We parked in the underground car park of the stadium.

On the dirty, broken paved streets by the stadium people hung around in knots.  There were medium rise grey tower blocks around and about. They were mostly men and many sported Fenerbahce jerseys. Some sipped beer from bottles and many smoked. The few women who were there tended to be middle aged and heavily made-up. A woman would have to be rather daring to attend a football match in Turkey even in the immediate presence of her husband. They were a blatantly working class crowd. But they had to be relatively well off working class. Those who were really poor could never afford a ticket to see the working man’s game.

We mingled with the crowd. But we must have stood out like sore thumbs. Yilmaz could perhaps blend in. I am perhaps too tall, too pale and too blue eyed. There are Turks who are totally white but not many. Moreover, my dress sense is decidedly unturkish. As for Murad – he dressed like the multi-millionaire that he was even when attired in casuals. He rolex could not but be conspicuous. The proletarians eyed us knowingly. I was given camouflage – a Fenerbahce scarf. That was just what I needed on a scorching summer’s day. But many others were similarly accoutered.

The police took security very seriously indeed. They are always armed. But I saw one officer near the police bus carrying a machinegun.

We went in a VIP gate. From there it was up by lift to a box on the terrace. The box had an anteroom with seats, a TV and a pretty young hostess serving drinks and snacks.

We went out onto the room that was open to the air. We saw the 50 000 stadium rapidly fill up. It was a match against Kayseri – a minor team from Anatolia.

There was an athletics track around the edge of the football field. There were announcements blaring in Turkish. Fenerbahce was a sports club and not just one for footer. There were announcements about things the club had won in other sports. The women’s volleyball team had won a match. They came out and walked in a victory lap around the stadium and showed off medals as they waved to a largely apathetic crowd. If only the ladies had been togged out in their volleyball gear I am sure they would have elicited a standing ovation!

A few of Murad’s young friends were there. There was a tall chap there name Demirhan – he had a pale complexion and mid brown hair. He spoke more than satisfactory English and always greeted me with particular vivacity.

The crowd were geed up. They were chanting and singing tribally. One end of the stadium would chant to the other.

The Kayseri fans were in their own little section. They were fenced off and surrounded by police for their own protection.

The names of the Fenerbahce players were announced on a big screen as images of them played. The fans chanted the surname of each man as it came on. One was a Dutchman ‘’Kuyt’’ who was a blond as a Nazi wet dream.

Finally it was time for kick off. The fans were in a tizzy of excitement.

I have always been indifferent to footer. But it was impossible not to get excited. The exhilaration was infectious. There is something mysteriously energizing about enormous gatherings.

Our team scored and we were jumping for joy and shrieking manically. It was one of first times I had seen Murad display emotion beyond moroseness. He was ecstatically punching the air.

A while later Kayseri got one back. The atmosphere was sepulchral.

In the second half our lot took the lead again. It finished 2-1.

In fact it was a moral victory to Kayseri. As the second best team in the country Fenerbahce should have thrashed them by a goal difference of at least 3.

A week later we were back in the stadium for another match. It was against a more formidable opponent – Benfica. Benfica is reputedly the most puissant team in Portugal. It was part of some European League. I have never considered the intricacies of such competitions anything better than a footling waste of time.

I was apprehensive lest Benfica win. Murad would be suicidally depressed. No doubt I would be the jinx.

It was much the same format as last time. But you could cut the tension with a knife. The home fans did not expect to win – though no one dared vocalise it.

The Fenerbahce deluded themselves with a chant about going to Amsterdam – where the final of the competition was due to be held.

In the end Fenerbahce exceeded expectations and won 2:1. So I had brought good luck!

On my days off I explored the city. I had one day off a week. I went back to the Sultanahmet district. I walked around the mosques – the Blue Mosque and the Hagia Sofia. I went into the Egyptian Market. I took a ferry cruise up to the Black Sea.

I revisited the outside of a hotel where I had lodged ten years before. I saw the phone box wherefrom a Bavarian had called home with me beside her.

On one ferry I met two nurses – one Aussie and the other Canadian. These young ladies were working in Saudi Arabia. It must have been good money. We chatted about Anzac Day – it was coming up. It happened to fall on my day off. Did I want to take a coach for a few hours to Gallipoli and walk up the hill in the predawn cold in time for a dawn service? I must say that was beyond my patriotism. Although Irishmen had most valiantly lain down their lives for King George V there I did not go to honour them.

On the ferry the guide gave us a commentary on all the buildings we were seeing that lined the shore. One of them was Dolumbahce Palace – I had been inside it 10 years earlier. The guide spoke excellent though accented English and showed off his linguistic aptitude by breaking into French and German. The shortish chubby middle aged man was balding but had grown his mid brown hair long. He was a rather white Turk. He told me he was half Turkish and half Greek. I was stunned. I am all for love across the divide. But there was very bad blood between Greeks and Turks especially when he was born in the 1960s. More power to his parents for putting aside all that animus and marrying whom they loved. There had been anti-Greek pogroms in Turkey as recently as the 1940s. A minute Greek minority remained in Istanbul. The Metropolitan of Constantinople lives there and he is head of all Orthodox Christians. The Turks say only a Turkish citizen can fill this role. It is sad that in a city that was once overwhelmingly Greek so few Greeks remain.

On the ferry I chatted to a couple from Buckinghamshire, UK. He was a bald white man in his 40s. She was a pretty Mauritian of Indian ethnicity. She spoke brilliant English with a pronounced French accent. They were child free.

When strolling around a market I strove to shake off a hawker. He addressed me in English. I lamented in Romanian that I did not know a word of English. He spoke in excellent Romanian and told me he could explain it in that language instead. I was stunned.

Zulia came out to visit. She stayed for a few days.

My friend Paul came out. He and his mate were doing a show. I spent an evening with them and we went to a Turkish bath.

On the metro I spoke to a French couple who were tourists. He was black and she was white.

In the evening when I finished work I sometimes took a taxi into the city centre. Sometimes I went by metro.

In the nearby shopping centre there was a viewing platform overlooking the main runway of the airport.

I met an obese oldish Teuton. He quipped that he was Hermann ze German. He really was called Hermann. He had his aviation magazines, notebook and binoculars. He was a plane spotter.

Some days later I returned to the viewing platform. Hermann was gone. In his stead there were several middle aged British men from Manchester. They had all the gear and were having a lively discussion about the planes. They knew all about them. As an AZAL airliner went down the runway one of them exclaimed ‘’look at the speed of that taxi’’. They were ooing over the plane as though it were a Page Three girl in a string bikini. I had a chin wag with these chaps. They told me that had been to Guangdong in China to watch civilian airliners. They heard an irate announcement in Mandarin. It was all Greek to them. Before they knew it they were arrested. They had their plane spotting magazines and tried to explain that they were innocently looking only at civilian passenger planes – the movements of such planes are advertised and are hardly top secret. This explication saved them from the firing squad.

After a few weeks Murad started picking me up late. Pick up was supposed to be 9 o clock.

Some days it was 9:30. He would not tell me. He would simply show up later. I was paid to be available. Next day he would rock up at 10. Another day at 11. One day I was still waiting at 5 o clock. In the mean time I had nipped out for snacks. I had been waiting in the lobby all day.

The pleasant receptionist noticed the discomfort on my face when he addressed me by my Christian name. He asked if he should call me Mr –. I said yes please. In Turkish they always call people by the first name and then add ‘Mister’ or ‘Mrs.’ afterwards.

I chatted to the cleaners there. These hefty menopausal women were Turkish Bulgarians. My smattering of Russian went some way with them.

I was paid a good wage and on a weekly basis. I noticed the bank transfer fee had made a small dent in my pay packet. I did not protest. Remiss of me it was.

I had spent a few weeks in Istanbul. The big test was whether Murad was going to keep me on permanently. He had his university exams.

I got the impression that he was not happy with me. I had once put my foot on the wrong part of the car – where the carpet is not there. That hacked him off. I had waved at a security guard – an unpardonable degradation of Murad’s exalted status. I ate too much.

The summer hols were looming. Murad would estivate on the craggy coastline at Marmaris – this is one of Turkey’s most exclusive resorts. Erdogan had a holiday house there right beside Murad’s place. If I played my cards right I would be invited on holiday with Murad. The thirty-nine thousand pound question was would he give me a one year contract?

A few days later I received an email from Rauf. It delicately delivered not unexpected news. Rauf told me that unfortunately they would not be extending my contract.

I had mixed feelings about it. It had been a handsomely rewarded contract. Istanbul is an enchanting city. I did not think much of Murad. In a sense I was wasting my time – it was not stimulating to work with such an ignoramus. I was achieving nowt. I jetted home.

Aboard the plane I chatted to a swarthy white woman in her 30s. She spoke good English but with a noticeable non-native accent. I asked this petite lady where she hailed from. She parried the question for a while. Half-way into the flight she felt safe enough to state that she was Israeli. Israel and Turkey were having a diplomatic spat at the time. Something to do with the small matter of Netanyahu sending soldiers to kill unarmed Turkish civilians on a humanitarian ship in international waters. This act of piracy was not the woman’s fault and perhaps she was as horrified by it as I was.

Some weeks later I heard that Murad has passed his end of year exams. It was doubtless down to my non-teaching of him. Could it have been deus ex machina? Or perhaps daddy had crossed the university’s palm with silver?

Last time I had a good cyber stalk of Murad I found that he is in a very senior post in his family’s conglomerate. He has added an MBA to his list of qualifications that he bought. Cough. I mean, earned.

ADRIATIC CRUISE

That summer I was kicking around London. I was living with my friends in Twickenham. I was signed up with agencies for summer school work. I would arise before 7 and shower. Some days the phone would ring and ask me to go to Hampstead, Camden or wherever.

‘’Can you make it for 9 o clock?’’

‘’I will run but I might not make it.’’

‘’Ok I will tell them you might be a bit late.’’

It was fun to show at a language school somewhere in London with no preparation. Photocopied sheets would be thrust into my hand by the Director of Studies as I walked into a classroom of teenagers from Colombia, Saudi Arabia, China, Spain, Italy, Russia and elsewhere. With zilch preparation I would ad lib the lesson from these worksheets. It appealed to the showman in me. I like an audience. I would introduce myself:

‘’My name’s George. I am from Ireland. I grew up in the Middle East/ I am X years old and I live in London. I studied history and then I qualified to teach English as a foreign language. I have two sisters. I am not married. In my free time I like cycling, socializing, travel and doing stand-up comedy.’’ I would then give myself a hearty round of applause and they would all join in.

Having modeled this theophrastian self-introduction I would call upon the students to stand up come to the front and do likewise. They would emulated me in a sterling fashion.

My peripatetic teaching was agreeable in many ways. It was a barrel of laughs and no stress. There was variety and cosmopolitanism to it. The trouble was that the pay was miserable. In the evenings I would traipse the comedy clubs of London Town doing my act – my shtick being gallows humour leavened with a rabbelasian rant and a takedown of royalty and political correctness. It was Boris Johnson meets Frankie Boyle. I would seldom take to the stage with less than a bottle of wine under my belt. Needless to say the poverty pay gracelessly dished out by language schools was hardly enough to keep a man of my then unquenchable thirst in funds. On days when I did not have work I cycled around Londinium on a Boris bike. It was a happy go lucky existence. There are few more blissful places to be in the summer than good old London.

I was working temporarily in a language school just over the wall from my dear friends in Buckingham Palace.  Ironically it was up the street from where I had been at nursery. It all goes to prove that if you make a massive effort with education then you end up right back where you started. The chain smoking skinny Scouser in a leather jacket who ran the language school and I were not in sympathy. One day after an adult lesson with an Armenian, two Brazilians, a Kazakh and some others the phone rang. It was Dawn from the agency.

‘’Hello George, how you doing” she chirped in her Derbyshire accent.

‘’Most very exceedingly well thank you and how do you do?’’

‘’I am good thanks, George’’ she giggled. ‘’Anyway there is a job you might like cruising on a superyacht in the Adriatic as a tutor to two teenaged boys.’’

‘’Oh yes?’’ my interest peaked.

Soon I was sold on it. Days later I boarded the flight from Gatwick and flew to Kotor in Montenegro for the first time in my life. I was sure this Adriatic Cruise would take in the Ionian Islands as well as the eastern coast of Italy. I was to prove to be dead wrong on both counts.

Montenegro is a small country that side besides the Adriatic Sea. It border Croatia, Serbia, Albania and Kosovo. It was once part of Yugoslavia. It is not an affluent land.

The Montenegrins call their land Chorno Gora (‘’black mountain’’) which bears the same signification as the Latin name by which we call Montenegro. That very balmy summer’s evening when I landed at the airport I saw signs in Montenegro, Russian and English.

I was met at the airport by a diminutive blackbearded Montenegrin named Marko. Marko worked for the family. He was an amiable sort and spoke faultless English with an accent that it would have been impossible to trace. His lack of stature was a little surprising given that on average Montenegrins are among the tallest people in the world. But of course there is variation in a population. I took an instant liking to him and he drove me to my accommodation. It was a decent room in a modest guesthouse overlooking the Bay of Kotor.

The family would not be in Montenegro for 2 days. Therefore I had been checked into a hotel by them. I had been flown out early because they could not get me a more suitable flight. It was the high season for tourists.

I wandered around the white and beige town of Kotor. The land was exceptionally rocky and the mountains rose very steeply out of the blue bay. I was wafted by zephyrs which meant that 40 degrees did not feel so bad. There seemed to be but one narrow road winding along the indented coastline. This made for horrendous traffic jams.

There were plenty of Russian tourists. It was once of the cheapest destinations in Europe. Montenegro is s Slavonic and an Orthodox Christian land. The Russkies therefore fit in. Russia had backed Serbia in the wars in the former Yugoslavia. The Montenegrins are more Serbian than the Serbians.

I took a few dips in the briny sea. Otherwise I occupied myself my reading in my room like the bibliomane than I am.

The walled town of Kotor is pleasing but offers no outstanding sights.

In an internet café I fell into conversation with some French boys. They were playing games of darts and snooker. They were in their early 20s. I told them why I was there. A slender brown haired Frenchman inquired if I would speak Russian to my Russian family. I affirmed it. He remarked, ‘’Je crois que votre passion est les langues.’’ He was mistaken.

One evening I drifted into an alehouses seeking directions. I was sporting a T shirt from Red Molotov – it had Thatcher in the guise of Che Guevara. It was a marvelous ‘’fuck you’’ to all those leftists who sport T-shirts of the international terrorist racist homophobe who authorized mass executions and torture on an industrial scale and closed down the trades unions in Cuba. It is a scandal that imbeciles adulate this cruel oppressor.

There was a grey bearded Dubliner in his 50s there. The shortish bespectacled man inquired of the likeness on my T shirt, ‘’Is dat Maggie Tatcha?’’

‘’It is’’ I clarified.

He was aghast. He made an allusion to ‘’Occupied Ireland.’’ There is no such place. I had half a mind to tell this Anglophobic ignoramus what I thought of him and people of his ilk. We Irish are British. But I was seeking directions and did not want to go without them. I bit my tongue.

The mother called me the day before they were due to arrive. Daria spoke superb English and came across as very clever and energetic. I was later to discover that she was a lawyer.

The time had elapsed and finally the family had arrived. I was in the marina and found my way to the yacht: Solaia. It was hard to miss. At 40 metres long it was by far the biggest yacht around.

I was there in good time. The captain greeted me – he said his name war Mark. At the gangplank I greeted him most formally, ‘’Permission to come on board sir?’’

‘’Permission granted’’ he tittered at my archaism.

Mark was a middle aged man of middling height who was fairly spare. His black hair was inclining to grey. He spoke in a slightly South of England accent – not Cockney and not Received Pronunciation. He wore a polo shirt and smart shorts. He always wore that – uniform. He was down to earth, courteous, businesslike and approachable. He was not the gruff old seadog that one might have anticipated. ‘’Please do call me Mark’’ he added with a smile.

In a moment I was introduced to the mother of the family, ‘’Hello my name is Daria’’, said a very slender and pretty woman of about 40. She had dark brown hair, deep blue eyes, a notably retroussé nose and light skin. Were those full lips fake? She spoke almost faultless English.

‘’This is my husband Borislav’’ she said turning to a man of about 5’4’’. I got the measure of the man. He was a little older than her and had short spiky brownish hair. He had a wide and faintly idiotic grin as well as large ears. Borislav’s English was a matter of listening more than speaking. He had been to military school as he eagerly told me several times. He had some high up position at one of Moscow’s major airports. I never understood quite what his role was.

Then I met the two boys.

Sergei had dark brown tousled hair, pale skin and smallish brown eyes. He was extrovert, of a sunny disposition and had a very carefree manner. His English was almost fluent bearing in mind he was only 14.

Alex was 10 years old and had mousey brown hair, green eyes and a slightly dark complexion. He was pleasant but timid. He spoke little English and rather let his stepbrother do the talking.

We went into the large drawing room. It was luxuriously furnished.

‘’Champagne!’’ Daria called for. A hostess in a white airtex and matching white miniskirt bowed decorously and returned with tray of flutes filled with bubbly.

Daria insisted I quaffed. It was not yet ten o’clock in the morning. I could tell I was going to enjoy this voyage.

‘’Let me explain’’ said Daria. ‘’I am Alex’s mother – he is from my first husband. We are now divorced and I am married to Borislav. Now Sergei – he is Borislav’s son from his first marriage.’’

So the two were stepbrothers – not blood brothers. That explain it. I had noted that they did not look at all similar.

Along came another couple.

‘’This is my husband’s brother and his name is Mikayil’’ said Daria.

There was a man with an alcoholic’s ruddy cheery face – he was grey haired and stood about 5’9’’. He had an impish smile, devil may care attitude, a venerable beer belly and a surprisingly quiet voice. A vicelike man shook mine.

‘’And please meet his wife Yaroslava’’ said Daria.

The lady was perhaps 25 and though pretty she was almost painfully thin. She had blue eyes, dark blonde hair and a tan that must have been topped up by regular trips to the Caribbean. She was lightsome, energetic, alert but almost monosyllabic. Her husband must have been at least 20 years older than her.

The yacht set sail – out of the Bay of Kotor. Before long we were on the open sea. We were breasting the waves. The Adriatic Sea is fairly enclosed so the waves were smallish. We saw the rocky coastline slowly fade into the horizon. The azure sky smiled splendidly over us.

Mikayil was rarely out of his cabin. What can explain his extraordinary torpor? I seldom saw him without a drink in his hand and never saw him sober. Although he was sometimes on deck attired in nothing more than his swimming trunks I never once saw him take a dip in the sea despite the conditions being idyllic.

Yaroslava spent most of the time working on that tan. It’s a hard life.

My duties were not onerous. I was to chat to the boys and improve their English generally. Sergei would talk the hind legs off a donkey. The trouble was that Alex was diffident and could not communicate well anyway. I was under strict instructions not to let on to the boys that I spoke a little of their language.

Sometimes we played chess. They were both rather good. I let them win a few times. Then they asked me to play my hardest. Though I beat them – it was not easy. I told them I had sometimes played the champion of Azerbaijan. That is true but she had beaten most of the time within 10 moves.

Later the hostess had a chance to introduce herself. She was 30 something, plain faced and had dark blonde hair.

‘’Hello my name is Amber’’ she said in a detectable Australian accent. Her voice was soft and almost expressionless. She was an unobtrusive person but on the dull side. She had been a hostess on superyachts for several years. Her duties were unglamorous. It was cleaning the whole interior of the yacht, serving meals and drinks.

Later I met the other hostess. Agnieska was a tall Polish lady in her late 20s. She had chestnut locks usually tied in a chignon. She had dark blue eyes, a retiring manner and a graceful presence.

There was a Swedish engineer on the crew. The goateed one is the only short Swede I have ever met. He had been in the Swedish Navy as a submariner. There is not a lot of room aboard one of those. His small size will have been an advantage during his 10 000 leagues under the sea.

There was a French chef. Laurent was towards the end of middle age. He was a bluff, greying and bespectacled chap who was agreeable enough and gratified that someone could speak to him in his own language. His English had been acquired working in Cheltenham. As for his culinary skills – magnifique! We had croissants freshly baked each morn.

There were two deckhands in their early 20s. One boy was British and the other an Aussie. They were likeable and vapid.

In idle moments I chatted to the crew about life on the ocean wave. The summer season was mostly spent in the Mediterranean.

The owner was a revoltingly rich American. He had a painting of all the US Presidents of the last 10 years up. All were shown together as though they were both in their presidencies at the same time. The Republicans on one side of a private members’ club and the Democrats on the other. All wore suits. There was a mini library from which we were free to borrow.

I read Andrew J Bacevich’s Washington Rules. In it this US Army officer turned historian eviscerated the military industrial complex.

I had time to watch YouTube documentaries such as Pakistan’s Double Game. It was about how President Musharaff pulled the wool over the Bush Administration’s eyes. He gave just enough cooperation against the Taliban to keep US military aid coming. But it was not enough to defeat the Taliban or provoke pro-Taliban elements into ousting Musharaff.

We dined together and made conversation. Daria was a fairly hardline Russian nationalist. She excoriated US and British policy with regard to liberating Iraq from a genocidal tyrant. She also said that if she were a Westerner she would think differently. I was impressed by her ability to put herself into someone else’s shoes.

We discussed the Falklands. Borislav said trying to be sympathetic that many Nazis had gone to Argentina. True but that does not impinge on the Falklands issue.

Daria said it was terrible that the Republic of Ireland did not permit women to kill their children. It crossed my mind that she had made her womb a crime scene. That is the norm in Russia.

Borislav listened but did not contribute to the dialogue.

Daria told me of having her car stolen at gunpoint by two men from the Caucasus. When she reported the felony to the police they said, ‘’why are you crying? At least they did not kill you or rape you?’’

Daria was a vivacious and likeable person. But she also vocalized the most rebarbative racist prejudices. ‘’Why does France let all those blacks in? They are the ones committing all the crime?’’

I wanted to edify her. But I did not wish to be thrown overboard. How do you correct the bigotry of your employer?

She told me that ethnic minority people should not be allowed to be citizens. She though Kazakhs were all right but she openly despised people from Azerbaijan and Armenia. I told them that in the Republic of Ireland our prime minister was half Indian and an out homosexual. Daria’s facial expression register her utter revulsion. Her husband laughed at her discomfiture.

We stopped off in a few towns along the Adriatic coast. They orange roofs, white walls and elegant piazzas. The Catholic churches in every seaside town boasted fine looking campanile. But these sleepy towns all blurred into each other after a while.

At the first town in Croatia a yachting agent came out to meet the yacht. She had a briefcase full of documents.

The yachting agent was a drop dead gorgeous lissome lady of perhaps 20 years of age. She wore a virginal white skirt and blouse rimmed with the aqua marine livery of the yachting company. Her mid brown hair shone all the down her narrow back. Her healthy young skin was just slightly tanned and her features were of dreamlike prettiness. As she tottered along on her dangerously tall high heels I wondered, why oh, why they company had hired her of all people? She certainly added to the luxurious image.

It turned out Yaroslava did not have the right visa. The captain said he had told the port authorities she was a member of the crew. That was how they got around it. He said that people could go to prison if it were discovered that he had lied for them.

I would rise in the morning and order breakfast. I would have scrambled eggs most of the time.

We would be anchored only a few hundred metres off the coast. Often there were a few islets close by. They would be covered in very dense pine forests and bare rocks. Sometimes there were dense waxy green bushes. They water’s surface would re-echo with the crickets’ croaking chorus. The curious Mediterranean odour of olives would greet my nose.

Alex rose very early and went out on paddle canoes. I had to go too.

Sometimes we went out on the tender. There was a big yellow banana towed behind it. The tender was driven by the deckhands. They would execute sharp turns this way and that to make us fall off. I was faintly frightened about breaking my neck.

After a while the tender would shake us off the banana. We would then have to haul ourselves on.

The boys wanted to dive off the yacht into the sea. I checked and double checked with the captain that the sea was deep enough. He had all sorts of super sophisticated sonographic equipment and assured me that the water was over 10 deep. I did not fancy ending up paralysed. That might be worse than death.

We would dive in from the 3^rd deck about 9 metres up. It was an awful lot of fun. Then swim around and climb up the ladder to do the same. My childishness was an asset. Not many men my age would take delight in such infantile pursuits.

We stopped on the Croatian island that Marco Polo had come from.

On one Croatian island we visited a restaurant half way up the hill. They had cooked a special lamb dish for half the day for us.

The family spoke English to the hefty bearded Croat father and son who ran the place. They Croats were very relieved that their general from the 1990s had just been acquitted of war crimes by the International Criminal Court.

I was given some time to wander about the town. Mikayil was in a portside bar sipping his 10^th beer of the day – it was almost luncheon. He hailed me over and demanded that I sink a beer with him. I happily obliged. I spoke my broken Russian to him and he was most pleased.

As I was on the boat Daria showed herself to be more than satisified with me. Would I consider coming to work for her as a tutor to her son in Moscow. I had an offer to return to Azerbaijan but did not tell her that. I harboured doubts about going back to Baku and the Iranian I was due to work for there had not responded to emails in weeks.

Yes, I told her. I would be delighted to come to Moscow. We haggled about the salary. I asked for 25% more than Baku was offering.

‘’It is not so small’’ she said with some discomfort. But agreed. Accommodation would be provided.

Daria and company would be going on another super yacht later in the summer. Would I like to come on that? I agreed those dates.

All this was verbally agreed with her. Nothing was put on parchment.

Then the agency contacted me. Could I go on a cruise in August in the Mediterranean off the coast of Sardinia? Another Russian family needed me.

I said yes to this other opportunity.  But I knew that this clashed with the dates I had agreed to Daria.

My policy was to say yes and keep my options open. As the SAS say – never close an option until you must.

I was to come to regret selling the same camel twice over.

The day before our cruise ended Daria paid me in cash. She paid me in banknotes. Some of them were 500 Euro notes.

All good things must come to an end. After a fortnight we ended our cruise in Split. I had farewell to them at the portside. A minibus was there to take them straight to the airport. I bade farewell to the crew.

I bent my footsteps to a downmarket hotel and checked in. They were willing to accept a 500 Euro banknote. I was glad of the change.

I ambled about the harbour side. It is a marvelous city – tranquil yet lively. I visited the must-see: Diocletian’s Palace. The Roman Emperor constructed this resplendent palace many centuries ago. Despite the vagaries of history it remains in astounding good condition.

The next morning I got a cab to the airport. I shared it was an obese Croatian-Australian woman. Her parents had moved to Oz in the 1950s.

The young taxi driver spoke good English and spoke about the wars in the ex-Yugoslavia. His one mistake was saying ‘’occupated.’’

I flew back to London via Zurich giving a wink to a black Swiss International Airlines hostess as I passed through the terminal. Her sour expression suggested that we were not about to build the bridge of nations. I took it in my stride. It may be hard to believe but it is not the only time in my life that a woman had knocked me back.

 

An agency run by a young Muscovite landed me a trial in Moscow. And so it came to pass that one September I flew to the city known as ‘the forty forties.’ I was to be the governor to two boys aged 8 and 5.

It was a warm afternoon when I landed in one of the Moscow airports. The man to meet me was a short podgy man in his 30s. His light blue suit was so gopping that it would make a pimp wince. I spoke Russian to this driver.

We stopped off in a supermarket. He had been instructed to purchase foodstuffs for me sufficient for three days. I chose my tucker. We came to the fish section. I said to him ‘’In general I don’t like it.’’

Then he drove me to a housing complex. There were several blocks of flats – all of them about 5 storeys high. There was also a minimarket there. The flats were all a reddish brown colour on the outside.

I was brought into a newish, spacious and sparsely furnished flat. The interior was mostly white. It was on one of the upper floors.

The driver explained that the family already had a British governor. But they were thinking of replacing him. So they had given him a holiday. This was his flat. I was given a Russian phone and told to install myself and await further instructions.

Then the driver was off.

I had a good rummage around the flat and I saw the governor’s clothes and some photos of him. He was white, handsome about 6’4’’, slim and had dark hair. There were some female clothes too in the flat. I did not suspect him of transvestitism. These garments were many sizes too small for him. I deduced that he had a girlfriend. That was super sleuthing on my part.

I had been foolish enough to put my laptop in for repair in London some days before departure. The repair man had still not fixed it and was not answering the phone when I left. So I had gone abroad without a computer. A computer is the source of so much entertainment. It is also the means by which I write. I was therefore bereft without it.

I headed out and explored the area. I went out of the gate of the complex. I turned left and walked up the road towards the supermarket where I had had my foodstuffs bought. I passed a chubby middle aged woman who was blatantly a Filipina. I greeted her in Tagalog, ‘’Komo sta? Mu booty poo.’’

It almost knocked her dead to be addressed in her own language by someone she presumed to be Russian.

For my stroll I turned back and walked down the hill – past the housing complex where I was lodging. There was a nursery down the road. On the corner there was a kebab place run by a chap from Uzbekistan.

I came onto another road. There was a good footpath beside it. I turned left onto it. There were a few trees. I saw large billboards advertising candidates for the local elections later that month.

There were huge gates of the houses of the super-rich. On the far side of the road there was green wilderness. I also saw signs to Archangelskoye Palace. It was a palace I was not to visit for several years but I did not know that then.

I went off into the wilderness. I found a holy well. I saw the Moscow River beyond/.

We were in Glukhova. The toponym relates to the Russian word for deaf ‘’glukhy’’. I wondered about the etymology of this town’s name. Could it have been an asylum for those whose ears were stopped?

At long last duty called. I was told to be ready outside my block of flats. A driver came and picked me up. We drove 5 minutes to the gates of a private housing estate. The usual black uniformed guards were there. There were high wooden walls and the road turned at 90 degree angles. Once inside the estate there were walls on both sides. For any burglar or assassin there would be nowhere to turn off and nowhere to hide. After a couple of right angle turns we came to large luxurious houses. There was plenty of space between the houses.

At last we came to a very large modern house – it was gray and tasteful. It had its own security gate with several guards in the stereotypical black uniforms. This family took security very seriously indeed to go so far as to have their own security gate within a secure compound and their own security guards.

I was ushered into the house. There was a glass conservatory at the entrance. Shoes came off and slippers on – such is the way in all homes in the erstwhile USSR. The floor was tiled.

I met the Russian nanny. She was a middle aged woman who was very slender – her cheeks were almost sunken. She was of middling height and had short black hair feckled with grey. Of course she spoke not a word of English. When I was not engaging her in

We waited in the conservatory until summoned into the house.

As soon as I entered the house proper a reddish brown Rhodesian ridgeback bitch bounded up to me. The hound barked furiously. I am an incurable cynophile but this Cerberus. I was afraid and she lunged at me as if to bite me. It was only with considerable difficulty that the nanny calmed the hellhound down. But for the nanny’s intercession I am sure that the dog would have taken a pound of flesh.

The mother was there. She was a slim blonde woman with a flat affect and faraway mien. Her height was average and she was good looking but her offhand manner was deeply unalluring.

I met the two little boys – both blonde. They both spoke English. They were energetic and agreeable in their way. The older fellow had flaxen hair and was tall for his age. The younger chap wore glasses. He had a tendency to say ‘’spock ee bock’’ when showing me how something functioned. Neither of them was one bit shy.

There was a four year old boy also blond. He was not to be my responsibility as he spoke not a phoneme of English. But oddly he was louder than his two older brothers combined.

There was also a 3 year old girl running around in her nappy. Guess what – she was blonde too but a darker blonde than the boys. Again she was not to be my charge. This fecund couple had produced 4 children in 6 years. That is quite a rate of production!

There was an open plan kitchen and drawing room. Everything was minimalist, tasteful and of the highest quality. The room was very spacious and airy. The ceilings were extraordinarily high. The walls were all white. A few plants in the corner of the room lent a natural feel to the place which otherwise have been almost austere.

I had to play with the little boys. They were rather wild and unmanageable.

Later I was summoned upstairs when they were to go to bed. I entered the large white bedroom that the two brothers shared. They were already in their pajamas and a black bearded youngish man was there – a friend of the family. He handed over some toys to them. I noticed the typical images of Orthodox saints. A variety of storybooks in Russian and English littered the room.

I was then bade go downstairs where I spoke to the mother briefly. She was watchful and almost unresponsive. It was as though she had no emotion. She was preternaturally phlegmatic. What was missing in her?

Then I was dismissed. The driver took me home.

One day I was free for almost the entire day and explored the area. From the shwarma stall on the corner I learnt the Russian word for ‘’takeaway’’ from the Central Asian chap working there.

I took a bus and the metro into town. I went to Mayakovskaya to meet Valeria. I took her to luncheon. She said she might have other work for me.

I then hastened back to Glukhovka. It was rather boring.

I shopped in the little supermarket in my housing complex. There was a 40 something man running it. He had the tight haircut, Orthodox cross necklace, machismo, muscles and bluff manner that typifies working class Russian males. I exchange a few pleasantries with him in his native language.

The driver came to take me to the house that evening. I asked what I should say if anyone asked me what I was doing in the housing complex. He then said the English words ‘’no Russian’’ and waved his hand – indicative of protesting my inability to comprehend their language. But I informed him I had already conversed in Russian in the supermarket so my cover was blown. Answer came there none.

I entered the gate of their garden. I was told to wait in the little guards’ building. I conversed with a bald, slim middle aged guard who was about 5’9’’. He said how he would like to learn English. He was smiling broadly. I knew that he had warmed to me. Russians are very sincere. I said that learning a new language took a lot of – then I racked my brains for the word – effort.

That evening I was in the house again. Once more the dog almost savaged me. But then she lay doggo on the carpet.

Later the hound sidled up to me. She was totally attitudinally different from a few minutes earlier. I indicated that I was unthreatening. I extended my left hand to pet her – left hand just in case she bit me it would not matter as much. She sniffed it, licked it and let me caress her a little. I thought we were friends.

Then I was with the boys. The mother had given them stationery sets. It included a scalpel. The older boy brandished it gleefully. I took it off him. He could accidentally kill someone with it. I handed the scalpel to his mother saying I had confiscated it. She gave it back to him!

Later I was to go to their private swimming pool with them. They had a tunnel under the garden to their pool complex which included a Finnish sauna and a Turkish sauna. The family was not stony broke! I never learnt anything about their acquirement of a few pennies.

I had a key to the pool itself. I went into the pool which was 10 m by 5 m or so. The two little lads were very strong swimmers for their ages. I made sure to stay very close just in case. I did not think that them drowning on my watch would be an ideal start to the job.

After a good swim in that lovely, warm clean pool it was time to go back. I let the door to the pool close. It locked itself. I then realized I had left the key inside there! Anyway we walked back to the house.

One time I had to go around with the littler boy. He and I were cycling around the housing estate. He wanted to climb into another garden of a house they also owned but did not occupy. I told him not to go in there. But he did anyway. I could not allow him to be there on his own so I followed him.

There was a thin wooden trestle fence. I climbed over it and it broke under my weight but I was not hurt.

There were two enormous and ferocious dogs. The barked madly. I was very worried. Turns out they knew the child and were tranquil around him which explained his insouciance but they growled fiercely at me.

Then a tall middle aged security guard came out. He took control of the dogs. He had us come into his little guard house. He and the child watched videos.

Later the boy went fishing in the pond there and chatted with the old gardener. The child gave me a spade, ‘’you will get us some worms.’’

I did as the 6 year old ordered me and dug in the patch he had indicated. I was thoroughly bored.

I only spent a few days with these children. They were good natured but tiresome.

I met the father on one occasion. He was 5’8’’ lean and fit. He was much more vivacious than his wife. He was clean shaven and in his 40s – his brown hair was speckled with grey. The dad and I chatted a little in my halting Russian.

After a few days it was time to leave. I am a reflector and I bethought to myself that whilst the salary was not to be sneezed at the job seemed perfectly ghastly. I did not want to work with little kids especially these really wild ones.

After my valediction to the mother one evening I headed towards the gate of their house. The security guards called me over to their little house. They had something for me. I was to sign for the envelope that I was to receive and date it. I wrote the date in Russian and asked, ‘’did I spell September correctly?’’

‘’More or less’’ one of them simpered.

Inside was cash: pounds sterling. Twas my payment for those days.

Next day I was driven to the airport. It felt good to be back in Blighty.

A few days later I got a missive. I would not be offered a job with the family. Had they so offered me one I surely would have declined it.

 

Sardinia.————–

Kazakhstan/UAE ——————

Moscow Daniil.———————–

Papathomas. —————-

Moscow tennis boys. —————-

Singapore

France

Kazan. Turkey.

Geek. Moscow

INSIDE A MANSION

I spent 4 days in the house of a Russian oligarch. I shall not name this gentleman for fear of being found floating face down in the Moscow River. The details will be changed to protect the guilty. A few months ago I was contacted by a British company with regard to being a tutor for a young boy in Moscow. I shall call him Dmitri. His father I shall call Gennady. Gennady is 50 odd and owns a whole host of business concerns.

Well cut to the chase. I had a skype interview with the slender Gennady who speaks good English. Would I like to be governor to his 8 year old son? Gennady was unusually charming and upbeat. Affability is not a characteristic that is common among super affluent Russians. His personality seemed promising. If he was anything to go by then his child could not be too horrid.

After some days I was invited to the Russian capital. Ere long I found myself boarding the kite at Heathrow. I was flying economy class – drat. I wore a suit as advised by the London agency. I spent over £100 on books for the boy Dmitri. My Streszlwinski suit is wearing out 6 years after I purchased from the Paul the Poof’s second hand emporium.

My eyes glided over my Russian phrasebook and ‘first thousand words in Russian’. It was early March when I flew to Russia. March is very must still winter in Russia. As the plane came in to land I saw that the country was still thickly carpeted in snow.

I had been texted that I would be met at the airport by someone named Maria.

Domodedovo is not a bad airport by any means. I had been to Shermetyevo 20 years ago when the place was distinctly tatty and underwhelming. I instantly saw how Russia has changed in the intervening space of time and changed for the better at that.  I was ushered into the diplomatic queue – not that I am important. I proffered my passport to shaven headed young border policeman. He was the unsmiling face of Russian officialdom. The youth narrowed his eyes – he assessed me with some suspicion and glanced back at my passport photo. Was I the same person as in the passport? He must have concluded so. Despite him seeing that I am a British he gabbled some Russian to me and I replied in the same tongue. Two shakes of a lamb’s tail and the rubber stamp thudded down onto the page.

I read Maria’s text about her being there in a scarlet jacket and white framed specs. I noted the use of the word scarlet. This damsel surely had a command of the Anglo-Saxon language.

Out into the meeting area. Scores of men stood around with signs. A few of them were grey-faced taxi drivers reeking of the fuel that Russian runs on – vodka. Past these dandruff flecked morose Muscovites, I saw Maria. Here was a svelte good looking young lady of average height who could make a lot more of herself. Her little round glasses only added to her allure. I was later to discover she was 28. I had been hoping for her to be attired like an on-duty prostitute – apparently such is the norm for Russian secretarial types. Alas her garb was neither short nor tight. Her lank and mousey ponytail could do with a dose of the bottle. She had very youthful skin.

We stepped out of the overheated terminal building and into a blast of Arctic air. The contrast was jarring. Anyway soon we were in the car. It was no the Zil limousine I had been pining for. The car was too warm too but Maria did not even unbutton her beloved scarlet jacket.

She asked me if I was Irish or Scots judging by my name. In fact she knew a great deal about the British Isles despite never having been there. We conversed easily. I considered making a pass at her. I am glad that I did not. She soon revealed that she is married to a Spaniard. We spoke a little in that language. She told me of her loathing for people from Central Asia as the vehicle barreled down the slushy streets. Her racialism is not uncommon in Russia. Some Russians have a herrenvolk attitude. That is more than a touch ironic bearing in mind that the Russian State always burnishes its anti-Nazi credentials.

We were in traffic for 3 hours. I was pleased that I had insisted on emptying my bladder in the airport. The moral of the story is: always take the opportunity whilst it is there!

Anyone who has been to Moscow will be aware that most its buildings are enormous, dark, grey and monstrous. It is only in the city centre that there are fine-looking, characterful and historical edifices. The journey along MKAD (Moscow Automobile Ring Road) was spiriting as afternoon turned to dusk.

Maria warned me that Dmitri would be a very badly behaved child. He was petulant, impetuous and recalcitrant. He had been known to hit his staff.

At length we came to Zhukovka where all the super-rich reside. It takes its name from the Marshall of the Soviet Union who was the man chiefly responsible for the defeat of the Third Reich. It is in the equivalent position of Ascot or Windsor with regard to London. There were many adverts up – some in English. I saw a billboard for a strip bar – so this is my sort of town.

There was a hand over and we got into a big SUV. It was driven by one of Gennady’s goons. This 6’6’’ ox-necked driver was a cheerful brute. He had a winning smile and he moved with the self-assurance that comes from being built like a brick shithouse. I can well imagine him flashing a grin as he broke bones. By his handshake I instantly perceived that he was frighteningly strong.

We winded through snow clogged lanes. There were pine trees around – all covered in ample snow. There were walls of compounds here and there. I made out many little palaces.

At last down one lane a black metal gate opened. It was 4 m high. In to the courtyard. Out of the vehicle at last. I was ushered into a small house beside the mansion. Maria introduce me to the housekeeper. None of the 20 staff spoke English. Fortunately I picked up a smattering of the Soviet language when I lived in Kazakhstan. i was shown to my boudoir. It was a reasonable size with an en suite bathroom – walk in wardrobe and a washing machine.

I was told to shower and dress in other clothes. So I wore that suit for nothing.

I was ushered into the house. The décor was bright and spanking new. The walls were mostly yellow and oil paintings almost covered the walls. There were oak panels on the edge of every room. The rooms very over furnished which made them seem smaller than they really were.

The house has 5 storeys. There is a 10 seater cinema with huge leather seats and beverage holders. There is a 3 D effect. There is an indoor pool. The house is a faux 19th country mansion. The house is large but not as ginormous as one might anticipate. The furniture is rather tasteful. It is sturdy stuff. All copies of 18th and 19th century classic pieces. I suppose Russia has almost nothing from that era. Most of it was destroyed during the revolutionary upheavals and the Second World War. Virtually no building west of Moscow survived that war unscathed.

There were oil paintings of the family all over the shops. It was a jot nouveau methinks.

I was told to wait at the foot of the stairs – just inside from the entrance hall. The stairs had a heavy wooden balustrade and were carpeted.

Then the nanny came along. Lara was a hefty and exceptionally unbeautiful woman in her mid-40s. Her mid brown unstylish hair did not quite touch her shoulders. She wore a white airtex and black trousers – it seemed to be some sort of uniform. Her large tinted glasses did not improve the looks of her flabby jowls. She and I conversed in Russian for the very excellent reason that it was our only common language.

‘’Dmitri will be down in a moment’’ said Lara as she went up to fetch him. She was a dull character.

She walked up the stairs and around the corner – out of sight. I heard her speaking to a little boy. From his tone of voice he was blatantly excited but a little anxious. He giggled a bit.

In time he came down. The slim child had very short dark brown hair – blue eyes set far back in his head, a pallid and faintly freckled complexion and a broad nose. He wore a shining white T shirt and blue tartan pajama bottoms as well as slipper. Russians are fixated with slippers. You cannot take three steps at home without slippers.

I greeted him with a handshake – being sure to speak slowly and quietly as well as in a slightly high pitch so as not to frighten him. He was diffident at first.

We went to play with his Lego. Later we watched a film. I could only make out a little bit of the dialogue of a dubbed version of Ali Baba. They had their own 20 seater cinema in the basement!

Before long it was bedtime. The boy was clearly deeply attached to her and hugged her fervently. I noticed that the child wore a pendant with a likeness of the Blessed Virgin on it. There were images of Orthodox saints on cards that were slipped under his pillow. I was familiar with these lucky charms from Romania which is also an Orthodox Christian country.

I was brought to the kitchen for breakfast. Porridge with honey. In Russia there is always some honey at the matinal repast.

I dined besides several maids attired in white livery. They were all the wrong side of 40. Was this the woman of the house’s policy so to avoid a soubrette turning her family into a bedroom farce?

I went to meet Dmitri. There was more time down on the carpet. Then there was playing outside with snow.

From Lara the nanny the story of the past few years spilled out. Dmitri had been in the President’s School in Moscow. Despite the name it had no particular connection with the President other than it is about 10 km from Novo Ugarovo – one of Putin’s residence just west of Moscow.

There were photos up in Dmitri’s bedroom of him with his class in President’s School. He was togged out in the blue and white uniform. But oddly they all wore slightly different versions of it. That is one of many Russian anomalies. They were a totalitarian society but were strangely lax about uniformity when it came to school uniform. It also struck me as odd that they were the ones who had two revolutions in 1917 but their children tended to be extremely well-behaved in school. The United Kingdom has not had a revolution since well before its foundation – 1688 – yet its children are often guilty of the most obloquial misconduct in school. But I suppose that is because massive scale state terror instilled discipline into the Russians in the 20^th century. The UK is so humane and people have so many rights that it is impossible to uphold good order.

The family had spoken to an educational consultancy. How do we get our boy into Eton? They were told – put him into a top British prep school. The family said – we do not want to do that. All right then – said the agency – put him into a British school in Moscow of which there are several. The family said – no, we are Russians we cannot possibly do that. This rather begs the question why they want him to attend Eton at all. The family put Dmitri into President School.

But school was a pain in the neck. Little Dmitri would rather not get up early and go to boring lessons and he did not like every other child and he disliked some of the teachers and the food was not as tasty as at home. Doing homework is tedious. So the family just let their little beauty stay at home.

I went through some of Dmitri’s books with him. I read aloud to him in English with enormous animation doing different voices for the characters and reading some in different Anglophone accents such as Irish, Scots, Australian and American. But he was having none of it.

I read him a Russian storybook aloud but of course mispronounced some of the words. We went through the Russian alphabet. I know all the letters but often get the order wrong.

‘Mya kiznak’ and ‘tvyor kiznak’ were very difficult for me to pronounce. He also taught me ‘eeyu krotkoyeh’ which I found tricky yo say. Making myself vulnerable and showing that I was willing to learn was supposed to set a good example for him.

Lara was with us the whole time.

The child played the part of the teacher which in a sense he was. He plainly savoured the role reversal. He was in charge. He told me if my work was not better next time I would get a grade 4 which is a fail. In Russia Grade 1 is the best and 4 is the worst.

Then Lara did the only real school work with him. She had him do some Mathematics. This was the first time I learnt that division is now symbolized by a mere dot these days.

The boy had opened up and was much livelier he was confident – too confident. He told me ‘you are fat and stupid.’ That is only half true!

Dmitri made disobliging remarks about Putin saying he was stupid. I said watch out the FSB might hear you? I had been told by Maria that the father was not enamoured of Putin. This proved the man to be perspicacious and decent. This was years before the Ukraine War.

I had to go to the computer room while Dmitri played minecraft. He played it half the day.

Later that I met the father again. Gennady Nikitich was as cheery and amicable in person as he had been remotely. He was thin for his age considering he was about the half century mark. He had short and tidy silvering hair. I sat with him in his surprising small office – just off the entrance hall. He remarked that if I ever felt unwell to let them know. They were fixated with health. The father was such an agreeable man yet had sired such a disagreeable offspring. It happens more often than one might expect. Contrariwise, ghastly parents can produce delightful children. There is little rhyme or reason to this – yea there is not much justice in the world. When you sire a child you really have no idea what you are going to get. The way you raise a child will have only a limited impact on that child. Francis Galton mused about nature or nurture. Methinks the former is more formative.

The child is a brat. He had almost never been to school. How would you imagine this would affect him? Dmitri is extremely conceited. He is socially retarded. He has adults as his playmates. He commands them. Come here – go there – build lego – build jengae – get down on your knees and pay with the cars with me – lift me up – throw snowballs. He is constantly acquiesced to. His character is never exercised. He never learns guile or to win people over. He gets more or less whatever he wants. Dmitry has no respect for age or rank. He never has to achieve anything. He needed to be curbed. If he were to be thwarted it might exercise his character. Boundaries there were none.

When he is fed all he has to do is chew and swallow. He does not even have to bring the food to his face. His big nanny Lara spoon feeds him or in the case of a hot dog hold it to his cakehole with a napkin under it while the child watches cartoons.

The child is forever deferred to. He rises when he pleased but happily this is not too late.

The one area of life where is not given a choice is with regard to his health. He must always wash his paws or more accurately his heavyset nanny does it for him. The boy has been induced into a state of learned helplessness. It would not surprise me in the least if she wipe’s his rear end.

I hope for this kid’s sake that he is not dispatched to a British public school. There he would have 7 different colours of shite kicked out of him. It would do him a world of good I admit.

One morning I was invited into the kitchen by the father. The mother was there. She was a svelte woman of about 40 who sported an expensive pink silk dressing gown and an equally expensive scowl. She wore her dark hair tied back and she seemed intensely pissed off. I got the distinct impression that she is perpetually pissed off. She had flawless skin, even features and a high pitched voice.

The mother puts the B before itch. She is also spoiled. She married a multimillionaire but isn’t life unbearable? Because she has skinny legs she feels entitled to be a harridan.

The poor woman – or should I say the rich woman – had a most unbearable existence. The baby’s nanny is useless. The 8 year old’s nanny is useless. The stepchildren are insufferable. Jewelry is so pricey these days. The servants are most inattentive. She had to go to a party that night. And she had to get her hair done for it. Oh the poor dear! The billionaire’s wife was a type I was to come to know well.

I never saw the boy in his mother’s company in the time that I was there: not for one moment. He spent a little time with his father. Nadya patently filled the maternal role in his life.

On a mantle-piece I saw a gold copy of a 100 Rouble note. A certificate said that this was 99.999% pure 24 carat gold. To clep it? It would be more than my extended family’s lives are worth. All about were CCTV cameras. Outside these stood out boldly. Indoors in each room a little black glass globe on the ceiling him the cameras. ‘Twould surprise me not if they had sound recording too.

The family have 3 children ranging from 21 to 2. The boy is in the middle – flanked by his sisters if you will.

Andrei was some sort of flunky for the family. He was a trim, ruddy complexioned blond man a little below average height and he was cursed with a birdlike face. Andrei’s narrow eyes suggested a touch of Tatar ancestry. He was with us when we played outside. The child had adults as playmates and choreographed us in what we did. We had a snowball fight and the father joined in with gusto.

There were several gardeners working in the garden. As the lawns and flowerbeds were thickly covered in snow they spent most of their time brushing snow off the paths. They all wore dark overalls. I exchanged pleasantries with them. One of them was a very brown skinned man named Abdurrahman. As I thought he was Azerbaijani. He was taken aback that an Irishman would say a few phrases in the Azerbaijani language. But then again if I met an Azerbaijani who could speak some Irish I would be astounded.

The house was like a yellow wedding cake from the outside – there were white stuccoes on it. It was not in fact that huge.

If I got the job I would not be allowed off the grounds Monday to Friday. But this incarceration would mean I could do a lot of study and writing. Moreover, I would save so much money.

I could not get the internet to work in my room. The password was dreamchaser – how strange that I should recall it over a decade later. I read up books on Russian and law. I looked out the window and saw the snow falling heavily. I reflected it was the anniversary of Stalin’s death. His obsequies had been held in subzero temperatures. In fact we were not so far from one of his dachas.

I was taken for meals in the kitchen. Nadya would ask if I had had enough. I had always been amply nourished.

Towards the end of my time she looked at me superciliously and asked, ‘’do you want this job?’’

I zestily replied, ‘’Yes, I do.’’ I had done far more stressful and humiliating jobs for a fraction of the money.

The family would be off to Mauritius in April. If I landed the job I would be coming with them. I have never been to those islands in the Indian Ocean.

It was decided that I should spend a little time alone with the boy. Nadya put me and the child to play in his bedroom and she made herself scarce for an hour. While I was there I got something out of my wallet. A passport photo of a two year old fell out. Dmitri inquired who this child was. I told him that the boy is my son.

Later that day Nadya asked me about it. I confirmed that I had a child. She had children two. One aged 20 and one aged 10.

It came to Sunday morning and time for me to fly home. I was outside the house under the portico when the four wheeled drive pulled up. The black bearded driver was a soft spoken and courteous type. We spoke about football in my faltering Russian. He was nice enough to tell me a flagrant lie, ‘’Your Russian is good.’’

I had misplaced optimism about landing the job. They took several days to give me the thumbs down. Perhaps it was a blessing in disguise.

What I learnt from my sojourn with that family is that too much money can ruin your life. They were a ten thousand times richer than the average Russian. I mean a ten thousand times richer. But they might have been less happy. That child reminded me of Pu Yi in the Last Emperor. His British governor describes the boy emperor as ‘’the loneliest boy in all China.’’ So too Dmitri was dwelling in a gilded cage. He had no friends and no interaction with other children. This privation of a fundamental human need was turning him toxic. He would grow up psychologically misshapen and emotionally stunted. It was like a luxurious solitary confinement. There was no give and take with him – no sense of sharing or socialization. He would be ill-equipped for adult life.

A few years later I was living in Moscow again. About 500 metres from where I lived I saw a house that looked remarkably like Dmitri’s house. But was it too small? The garden at the rear was too small. Moreover, his house had opened onto a street with houses on both sides. This had houses on one side only. Or did memory play me false? I later taught some lessons at President School. It is for the children of the ultra-elite.

Russia is a grossly unequal society – one of the most unequal in the world. That is bizarre given that for 74 years it boasted being the most egalitarian country on earth. The multimillionaires who could afford Eton and governors were about 10 000 families or about 70 000 people out of 140 000 000. That would be around 0.05% of the population.

While I was there Bruce Reynolds died. I did not know that at the time. I later developed a fascination with the supposed mastermind of the Great Train Robbery.

SARDINIA

Not so long ago I spent some weeks with a vastly wealthy Russian family. I shall not identify them but suffice it to say that this family has more money than several countries combined and that is no exaggeration. The man I worked for was briefly the richest man in Russia. How can it be right that one man has more money than tens of millions of people? No one can possibly work that had to even deserve a fraction of that amount of obscene wealth.

I had secured this gig through an agency. They asked which London Airport I preferred to depart from. I plumped for Heathrow since it is more proximate to my domicile. However, they bought be a ticket from Gatwick. I boarded a plane at Gatwick on a day of the sheerest sunshine. The departure gate was the same one from which I had flown to Rhodes a year earlier. I flew to Munich and barely had time to change. I reflected that I had not been to this airport since 2005 when I was there to visit the love of my life. I raced through this ultra-efficient airport and onto an Air Dolomiti flight. I was excited to fly on their airline because I had never even heard of it. I saw a white German couple well into middle age with three little black girls whom I assumed were their adoptive daughters. These lovable children were aged about 4, 5 and 6. They spoke flawless German so far as I could tell.

The plane buzzed off through the unclouded sky. I touched down in Olbia which is an airport on the Italian island of Sardinia. I was pleased to be in Sardinia since I had never been to this island but had long hoped to visit it.

I broke the handle off my bag – or rather it has been broken off some weeks before on one of my previous flights. I picked it up and mulled raising the issue there. But I thought I had better not leave people waiting. I had not been told if the family would meet me or a driver. I was also unsure whether the driver would speak Russian, Italian or English. So I went out to the meeting area. There I saw a sign with my name on it – surname and then Christian name in that sequence. The sign was held by a heavy set and massive shouldered red faced man in his fifties – his short white grey hair surmounted a serene and smiling face. His small moustache suited him. He wore shorts and a white T shirt. He at once exuded genuineness and a pleasing lack of sophistication. I greeted him, ”Buono giorno signor. Mi chiamo _______ . Come stai oggi?” He replied, ”Izvyentiye – ya ne govorit po Italianski.” His beefy mit pumped mine with great muscle power. His massive hand almost crushed mine though he exerted no particular effort. If this is how strong

”Ladna. Nezachto. Ya magoo govorit po ruski ochin mala.’

”Ochin kharasho”’

My halting Russian made his grim features brighten instantly.

Having established that he was Russian we conversed his native tongue. His name was Alexei. He did not speak English to any extent. His handshake proved that despite his advanced years he was decidedly strong. I inquired at a desk about seeking recompense for the damaged case – in fact Air Dolimiti had not damaged it another airline had long before but I was not going to out with that information. The chapess behind the desk told me that I ought to have taken it before leaving the baggage collection area but I could re-enter if I went through security. I explained that my suitcase had taken a knock and I would see if I could get compensation. I complained to airline ground staff in melodramatic Italian. I said I should not have to do that my arm waving did not cut it. The shrugged me off. Such is life! Go through security again? Bugger that for a game of soldiers – methought.

Out to the car. It was a sturdy jeep and the even sturdier drive insisted on hefting the case up himself and throwing it in the ample boot. On the drive we chatted easily. I spoke all about my family and he smiled deeply. We relaxed in eager others company and my native garrulity and curiosity did the rest. Russians are notoriously of funereal aspect. But when they crack a smile it is sincere. I had this chap eating out of my hand. I caught a glimpse of the cranes at the docks and thought that perhaps one day I would get the chance to look around this city.

We headed out of the city and through the dry country side. The odd patch of bare sand separated dark green and sharp waxy bushes. They looked like heather, box, broom and bracken. The land was fairly barren. Many large boulders littered the uneven landscape. The topography was varied and untidy. The neat little Italian houses were pale and sat under red and pink roofs. The road wound left and right and rose and fell on the undulating land.

I could see the Tyrrhenian Sea to our right. We were driving along La Costa Smeralda (the Emerald Coast). It is one of the most exclusive stretches of shoreline in Europe. Putin was known to have taken a discrete holiday here the year before. I know because a friend of a friend worked at the airport. Berlusconi was Italian PM at the time and had kept it from the media.

After about 30 minutes were turned right off the main road. We swiftly came to a grey palisade type fence about 2 metres tall. An automatic gate slowly withdrew to one side and the bulky car glided in. We got out of the vehicle. There were trees around the car port and a few SUVs were parked there. There was a security guards in a uniform and he had a holstered gun on his hip. He greeted me in Italian.

Alexei led the way down a stone path to the door. I was ushered into a room. There were cushions on concrete slabs. The floor was made of cork. The wall was bare concrete. In half concealed room a few metres away a Russian man spoke Italian to two Italian men. The Russian man was above average height and he had brown hair. His voice was a tight throat one. Alexei left my bags and went to speak to the man. The other man introduced himself as the by his Christian name. I shall call him the Mr. Cash. He wore pale blue clothes- shorts and a T shirt.  He shook my hand and addressed me in grammatical but very accented English. He was in his late 40s, 5’9’’ lean and fit. He was a driven man. His mid brown hair was brushed with an autistic level of pedantry. His nose was a little turned up and his pale blue eyes expressed an uncompromising attention to detail. His skin was a little rubicund. His bow lips and general demeanour indicated his relentless curiosity and drive to succeed.

Mr. Cash asked if I would like a drink. He had a uniformed Italian maid bring me coffee. He returned to his discussion. After a couple of minutes the Italian men were told they could leave. They had been discussing a building project.

The Mr. Cash came to me. I was told to address him by his Christian name. He told me about his two sons Kirill and Nikita. They were from the first marriage and he was now onto his second marriage. I was to tutor them a couple of hours a day but to come up with games and keep them amused.

I was shown to my room by someone. It was a in a space age concrete villa. I installed myself and then took a shower. After an hour the boss knocked on the cabin door. He was there with his son. The older one was blatantly severely autistic. He could function but had a monotone voice and vacant facial expression. He was intelligent except in the emotional sense. Nikita was the skinny younger one and he was normal. There were two little girls as well.

Every bedroom away from the main villa was its own little building. My room was generously sized and en suite. The maids even came in and ironed my clothes. There was an outdoor infinity pool. The estate was fenced off and right by a tiny private beach. There was a little wooden jetty with a sign bearing the Italian legend ‘ormeggio vietato’ – meaning ‘moorage forbidden.’

We had dinner al fresco – we always did. There were half a dozen maids – one was Russian. Apart from Natalya the others were all Italian. Natalya was a lanky

Siberian who was in early middle age. Few spoke any English. Natalya had dark blonde hair and large epicanthic folds. I estimated her to be a quarter Asiatic. I tuned into Russian as much as possible but could follow only a quarter of what was said. I spoke Italian to the other staff.

There were three Russian bodyguards besides the Italians. The Russian were also armed but wore no uniform. They carried guns in bags like hand bags. They were all former special forces soldiers. They kept a discrete distance. They were all extraordinarily muscular. They spoke little or in some cases no English. I addressed them in Russian.

Mr. Cash had hired Italian nannies for his little daughters because he wanted them to acquire the language. The 6 year old also spoke English as well as passable Italian for her age. She was called Kristina was a brownish skinned child with little glasses who seemed to be serious-minded and very brainy. The 4 year old, Polina, spoke only Russian and Italian. She was cherubic looking and sanguine.

There was a nanny named Maria. This diminutive dark skinned Italian was 36, she was shortish and had a good body bar a bit of cellulite. But I am being bitchy there – she looked much younger than her actual age. She looked typical for one of those southern Europeans who could be taken for an Ishmaelite. I was tempted to try it on with her but she had a boyfriend Gianluca. She called him Jean Luc since he was from Corsica. She could not understand Corsu so she spoke French to him. Maria spoke good English. She was a Sicilian who had grown up in Ventimiglia. This is a northern Italian town and it means 20 000. 20 000 what?

Maria had been working for the family for a few months. She would do two weeks in Moscow and then have two weeks off. In her fortnight in Moscow she would work every day without a break. The young lady was paid a full time salary for this.

There was a tallish and slim Italian Canadian whose English was almost there – as in she had moved to Canada as an adult and become a citizen. I shall call her Giovanna. She was 40 or so and sported fashionable little glasses. They got rid of her on my second day. She was supposedly too harsh to the little girl she worked for. They kept sacking nannies.

The nannies entirely took over the mothering role. As they were in loco parentis a nanny would share a room with the child who was her ward. It was the nanny’s duty to wash and dress the little girl. She would sit beside her at mealtimes and cut up the child’s food for her. Unsurprisingly these little girls developed a deep attachment to the one who was her primary caregiver.

In the morning there were exercise sessions for the children and nannies and myself before breakfast. Giovanna led them at first.

These were in one of the drawing rooms in the main villa on a rubbery floor. These were simple affairs such as stretching the arms forward. I was asked to lead them. I am no gymnast! It was droll that they asked someone as tubby as me to lead them. I had us stretch our arms in front of us and then right back – the left hand to the left and the right arm to the right. Then slowly bring them together for 10 claps. And then the same thing with claps above the head. Then to swing the arms forward 10 times and then backwards 10 times and so forth.

We also did an exercise I learnt in rugger many years before. Grab a hold of your left ear with your right hand. Stand on your left leg. Lean as far forward as you can without falling over. Hold it for ten seconds and then stand on both legs and let go of your ear. Then repeat but holding the other ear and standing on the other leg.

We did some Swedish drill under my capable direction. Americans call it jumping jacks.

I lead them in another rugger exercise. Press your right hand against the left side of your head for ten seconds. Then on the right side of your head than on your forehead and then both hands on the back of your head. You see the neck muscles build up fast.

The nannies studied this avidly and joined in with gusto. It was hilarious to be taken seriously as a fitness instructor bearing in mind I am unfit and hopelessly malco-ordinated. As a child I had a cross to bear – I am a sporting disaster zone. That was very difficult being at a sport mad public school where sporting ability is kudos. I was the last to be picked for every footer scratch team.

A little while later we would breakfast together – nannies and children. The Italian maids served us yoghurt with honey, toast and suchlike.

Much of the day was spent up swimming to the yacht. Using the slide on the yacht. We swam in the pool by the house sometimes.

There were a few sit down lessons with the boys. I would have them read and write. The father came and verified that I was doing a decent job. He believed that he knew far more about teaching English as a foreign language than I did. That was because he had no qualifications in the field and no experience in it either. If he was so much better than I was he ought to have done it himself. That is the case with most parents.

Mr. Cash observed that I had let some errata in the written work slip through. I said I had not picked them up on it because it is too demoralizing. I recall how bad it felt aged 10 to get a page of French back covered in red.

Then I did Mathematics with them. This was from Russian Maths books. These textbooks were a few years ahead of what they would have been doing in the Republic of Ireland or the UK. There were lots of algebraic equations but little trigonometry. These algebra problems were ones I could not solve. I said to the boys to take as much time as they wanted but be sure to get them right.

Mr. Cash showed up for an unannounced inspection. He did that with all departments of his staff. These snap inspections were a great way to keep people on their toes. He went through the work with a fine toothcomb. He spotted an erroneous solution. He asked me to talk him through it. I stumbled and could not.

‘I was the first at Maths in my year group’ I confessed shamefacedly. Was that foolhardy? Margaret Thatcher said ‘never admit more than is absolutely necessary.’

‘You should have said something’ he remarked gravely.

Then along came Karen. Karen as a 46 year old British. The woman was Karen by name and Karen by nature. She arrived in a nanny’s uniform and it even bore her name on the front. Her nanny’s tunic had no buttons so a child could not tear them off. She told us everything about her life straightaway. She told us about her diet in toilsome detail and the death of her father. She told us of her tug of love over a child. She had been in the media a lot and on documentaries. She was really into ”tell it all”. Karen had no idea how to be a servant and was not at all deferential. She even treated to us an in-depth elucidation of her diet. This woman had no decorum of filter. She did not display the obeisance towards Mr. Cash that was meet in the situation. This female seemed to forget who was employing whom.

On a later occasion I visited Karen in her room. She told me she had had an affair with a 19 year old sailor when she was in her 30s. The media report back handcuffs was not true because she had lost her virginity through rape. This revelation of hers was too much – it gave me a fright.

The idea was that Karen would share care of the infant Danya with the Russian nanny who was Victoria. She was 50 something Russian grandmother who looked after the infant. The slim, pale woman with short black curling hair was a phlegmatic sort and spoke a little English.

Karen and Victoria were not in sympathy. Victoria drove the Briton up the wall by repeatedly showing her how to how to wash baby bottles. No one likes to be condescended to. Karen looked daggers at Victoria from behind and confided in me that she thought her Russian colleague was a bitch.

The mother was 39 so I was told but had the body and poise of a 21 year old. 6 months after giving birth for the third time her body had snapped back into place. She was beautiful blonde with a honey coloured tan, good English but no brains. She had had a total personality bypass.

Mrs. Cash – as I shall call the mother – was as negligent as can be. She did not wash, dress, feed, put to bed or play with her children. She did not speak to them and scarcely looked at them. She just popped them out. After parturition her duty was done. I once saw her take her baby boy into the pool for 5 minutes because that is rewarding. Then she handed her little one back to the nanny. Mrs. Cash was an unfit mother. Under other circumstances a court would have removed the child from her custody.

Mrs. Cash had a very quiet voice and vacant expression. She was a woman of few words. She was undemonstrative. She did not wear much makeup or jewelry but we were in a very relaxed and private setting.

The family always did everything late. It hacked me off. We were told once to be ready to board the superyacht at 10 o’clock for a 2 day voyage. I was ready. There was much dawdling. Mrs. Cash was dilly dallying. Why did she tarry? She was not engaged in housewifery. I can tell you that for sure.

There was a bodyguard named Vanya. He was not tall but he was all sinew. He had something lupine about him. He was menacingly soft spoken and his English was good. Vanya had merciless grey eyes. He was always decent to me but I got the impression it would be a very bad idea to cross him.

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THE YACHT

There was a 68 metre yacht in the harbour. It was swimming distance off shore. This was a mightily impressive vessel – luxurious inside. The carpets were resistant to salt water. There were 13 crew. 9 were sailors and the rest were stewardesses. If I were the billionaire I would only hire stewardesses whom I could fuck – that would be spelt out to them.

I thought how differently I would do it. I would sail around the world of course and have cocaine fueled orgies every night – sharing my harlots with a few of my dearest chums.

This yacht was registered in the Cayman Islands. It also flew courtesy flags of both Italy and of Sardinia. It was astonishing to see the four black men’s head son a cross of St George. I had seen this in books of flags but it there me to see it fluttering for real on the salt wind. The flag with the heads of black me is not frightfully PC. I suspect that it may soon run afoul of the BLMers.

The yacht was named in honour of Mrs. Cash. I shall call it the Lady Cash.

The furniture was all waterproof. In the main room there was a dining table to seat 12 at one end. At the other they could sit soft on sofas. There was also a small table with a chessboard built in.

There was a small gym upstairs. On the poop deck there was a tiny swimming pool and a Jacuzzi. On the poop deck I once saw Mrs. Cash sunbathing facedown with her bikini top off. I thought it wise not to glance at her perfect form for more than a split second.

I decided to befriend the crew. This I managed with eclat.

The captain was a sprightly and lean Australian named Gordon. He was at the half century mark but I had him down as older. He had a small moustache which somehow managed not to be contemptible. He ran a tight ship all right. He would not employ those who smoked.

I got on well with Francois the young Frenchman who captained the tender. The blond young half Serb and I got on very well. He had worked onboard boats all his adult life. He had cruised around the Aegean and mentioned the isle of Mykonos. I said this was a gay island.

”Tu es gay Georges?”

 ”No pas du tout – j’ai un enfant.”

Francois was captain of the tender. This was a small boat that could seat 10. It was tethered to the superyacht. The tender was used to take people to and from shore when the superyacht’s draught was too deep to allow it to moor at the anchorage or jetty. The tender drew perhaps a metre of water. Francois slept on the tender because it had a tiny cabin. He was the only member of the crew who was permitted to smoke which he did but sparingly.

There was Kirsty – she was remarkably well-spoken for a Glaswegian. She was tall, slender (everyone on board was slender) has light brown hair and a permanent smile. She flattered me a lot? Did she fancy me? She definitely did not – she had a 6’4’’athletic boyfriend who was an engineer on board. He used to be a professional rugger player. Kirsty always flashed her nashers at everyone. That was her style. But the incessant smiling also made her come across as mindless which she was. After all she used to be an estate agent: good looks and no brains. She was used to buttering people up. She was efficient and good at her job. Kirsty lived in Spain between times but was a monoglot. She especially heaped praise on me for having a smattering of seven languages. She used to call the woman ”madame” instead of ”madam”. I never corrected Kirsty for being an ignoramus on this. She did not realise that by pronouncing is ”ma DAM” she was insinuating that this woman was the proprietress of a brothel. Of course Madame could be because one is addressing a Frenchwoman. But Frenchwoman or proprietress of a house of prostitution – is there a difference? But I enjoyed this joke as reflecting badly on both Kirsty and Mrs. Cash.

Kirsty’s tall, bald fiancee Yorkshireman who had been a rugger player not long before. He had much elan vitale. However, his manner was brusque – ‘nobody in the water’ he said to me once waving his hands across his chest in an X shape indicative of a negative answer. I thought he ought to have prefaced this with some linguistic pragmatics because he came across as overly imperative.

The other stewardesses were a New Zealander, a Pole and an Australian. All of these females were desirable and well under 30. I noticed that everyone on ship board came from a country with a littoral but then again few nations are landlocked. Everyone except the Polish lady was from a nation with an excellent seafaring tradition.

The stewardesses were all decent enough. I used my very few words of Polish on the Polish one – well who else? One of the stewardesses was an accountant. Why would she do this job? It involves cleaning rooms. But I looked up the pay and say why. The lowliest deckhand got 2 500 Euros a month, free board, no bills etc…That is better than a running kick in the gonads.

There was a young Kiwi deck hand. I got on very well with this plumber.

There was an Australian first mate who as axed and replaced by a Britisher. The captain insisted that the first mate be thrown overboard. Not literally! Not sure why the two Aussies had quarreled.

There was a tousled haired blond South African named Cobus. This personable young Capetonian. He was the scuba dive man and addressed me as ‘sir’. I suppose the Springbok in his early 20s did not know my status on board. Was I a family friend? He was sagacious to be deferential. I would far rather that someone erred on the side of courtesy than overfamiliarity.

The crew treated me as a guest at first and then got used to the idea that I was an employee. I was on a par with them. It was good to have some normality and to chat to them.

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Igor was the young bodyguard. I got on well with him. At first he had been very standoffish. I felt that this thick necked youth looked down on me for not being a muscleman. I am 6’1’’ and broad shouldered but this boy made me feel puny. He was nothing but sinew. His chest came out several inches packed with sheer muscle. With all that muscle – was there room a heart in there? He had imperfect dentistry but I found it prudent not to comment on this. I was all too aware that he could kill me with a flick of his fingers. He eventually mollified. He relaxed into his goofy gappy smile. I was the only foreigner who spoke Russian. So he came to like me and I saw him for what he was. He warmed to me because I cracked many jokes. I commented on Maria’s pert buttocks. We found we had a common interest. He was an amiable bloke of about 28. He was timid and lacking in self-assurance. Is that why he had bulked himself out? Did those mounds of muscles hide a deep seated self-doubt?  He was married but had not children yet. He wore a crucifix around his immensely thick neck. As we slid down the waterslide I would cry ”let’s go” and he would gleefully imitate me.

I had decided not to compete to him – not to stand as tall as I can and puff out my chest. I bore myself modestly – in a relaxed posture. I could not outman him. I was to become very fond of him. I would tell he liked me. Russians are never false about their emotions. We really hit it off when I made a lascivious remark about Maria’s arse. I said this partly out of sheer red bloodedness but as most Russians are viciously anti-gay I knew it would redound to my credit to affirm my heterosexuality. As I was spending a lot of time with boys aged 12 and 13 this could be a matter of life and death. I exaggerate only slightly. Igor mentioned he had been in Spesnatz (the Russian SAS) and served in Chechnya. You would not annoy him. You would not!

They changed body guards every few days. There was a private plane to take them home and bring out others at the changing of the guard.

There were some bodyguards in their 50s. They were still very strong even if they were not fast. One of them let slip that he had been in Afghanistan 30 years earlier.

There were a couple of bodyguards whom I did not get to know. They were not all big gorillas. Some were short and wiry but no doubt hard as nails.

The dad flew back to Sochi, Russia for a meeting- he was away for only a few hours

The last couple of days they went to Geneva for a wedding. I was glad to be shot of them I worked 8 in the morning to 10 at night

It was not hard work but I had to be three steps behind the boss’ sons. Nikita would even say it was ok to go away.

I would follow Kirill since he was less trouble. Being severely autistic he was predictable. He was also ductile and rigid.

My work consisted of swimming, or jet skiing, using the sea bob etc… I spent so much time in the water I thought I might develop gills. I certainly got wrinkly fingers.

It was so much fun sometimes. I could not believe that I was paid to jetski. It was the best paid job in my life.

There were board games. I used to like monopoly when I was little but found it enormously tedious this time. I played it a little. I tried to do as badly as possible to get knocked out. There was also a Russian game called anti-Monopoly.

I did animal noises for the boys which they liked. Their father was not so amused. He had no sense of fun. When he was away I did them a lot for the toddlers.

Every day we awoke at 8. I would go to the main house. There were light exercises led by me. Then retire to our rooms. Breakfast at 9. The parents got up much later – often at noon.

The food was superb. It was all freshly prepared. There was a wide choice. For breakfast there was toast, croissants, scrambled eggs, yoghurt, fresh fruits.

Dinner was mainly Italian food. I was able to avoid fish.

I was not allowed alcohol – no one but the parents was allowed to drink. They indulged liberally in champagne. No one was allowed to smoke.

Around the pool there were large towels of every colour. One was on each sun lounger.

The buildings were all single story. The roofs were rounded and tapered down to the ground. This almost disguised the buildings. It was therefore quite possible to walk up the sloping side of the house onto the roof.

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THE HOTTEST NANNY

Eventually a very desirable young nanny came along. Just to get me really excited – she was a nurse. Fiona was a 24 year old Briton. I had no idea about her nationality when I first clapped eyes on her desirable form and masterfully sculpted face. I saw her at dinner one evening and I greeted her in Russian – Dobra Vyecher. She replied, ”No, no I speak English.” She spoke in a winsome Scottish accent. Fiona turned out to be a neonatal specialist from Inverness. I stated that I had been to her hometown and had spent 6 years close by. Despite that we did not develop a lien.

Fiona lamented that when she arrived she was met by a man who did not speak a syllable of English. Like 9/10ths of Britons, Fiona had no aptitude for foreign tongues. Having not a phoneme in common with the driver made her nervous. She texted a friend the car registration of the vehicle she was getting into. Was she being abducted?

Later she was crying on the yacht. The airhead mum had said to her – you have no childcare experience. The head stewardess asked why the young nanny was silently sobbing. I went to speak to her wearing only my trunks. I consoled her but did not touch her. I told her what was what and tried to boost her morale. Seeing me in my swimmers must have been a real treat. I do not know how she could control herself – from vomiting. As I gave Fiona a thrill she decided to repay the compliment. Next day she was by the rectangular pool in her bikini. She has a marvelous body – slender yet bulging. Her boobs were large but not humungous. They were shapely and I could tell they were firm. Her bottom was pert and pinchable. What a sight! Nurse – I feel my temperature rising. I should have told her how she was making me swell up.

I had a chat with the calpygian one in her room. She told me she had two boyfriends whom she was kind of seeing. I would not have minded being the third. A few days later I inquired if she would be up for getting to first base and she decorously declined. I did not hold it against her. She had not led me up the garden path. I was unsurprised that she parried my verbal advance. She will have had many far more alluring offers.

When I walked back to my room that night a torch flashed at me. I stopped and turned towards the light. I said in Russian, ‘Good evening, it is George.’

They answered, ‘Ok’ in Russian and I passed on my way.

The guards were vigilant 24/7.

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There was Phaedra – I had never heard of that name. It made me call to mind a Latin poem I studied when I was 14 about a lamb named Phaedrus. Phaedra came out to replace Giovanna when Giovanna was given the boot. Phaedra was a British Italian about aged 30. In fact the British side was half Czech. She had pale skin, good body, shortish, mid brown hair but she was not as ravishing as Fiona. Phaedra’s hazel eyes were a little small and set back in her head. She used to smoke a pack a day and I could just about hear it in her mildly accented voice. But she had to go cold turkey without a ciggie for 10 days. I asked her if she had a boyfriend and she did not. She did not seem to realise this was a come on. Should have pressed my suit.

The mum let the girls eat ice cream at breakfast. The tiny girls spoke excellent English and Italian as well as their native Russian.

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THE BOSS

The other staff told me Mr. Cash’s surname and I looked him up. I began to piece together his psychology.

The surname was Mordashov – pronounced more da SHOV. I called him more CASH ov.

The boss was not easy to please. One does not amass a fortune of several billions without being a stern taskmaster. He was choleric. He showed some autistic traits himself. He was a creature of habit but one of his was to be late.

There was not a pinch of flesh on him and he exercised obsessively. I had to accord him some respect for that. He was a man of action.

His hair was always sculpted. He was always immaculately turned out but his clothes were simple. The villa was remarkably Spartan. I could even call him miserly. What was the point in piling up shedloads of cash if not to enjoy it? There was no football at the villa. There was no telly but this could be good thing. He must have correctly regarded it as a footling waste of time. The boys were not allowed to play computer games much. They were to spend their time in constructive pursuits. The children were all slim but not underweight.

He was a man of outstanding intelligence. He was full of questions. He wanted to get to the bottom of things. I was warned not to lie to him because if an answer was not convincing he would ask more and more until he uncovered the truth. I grew to admire him. He was unpretentious.

I remarked that I had met David Cameron and he was the same in private as when on display mode. The boss had met him and concurred.

Mr. Cash had come from nowhere. He was the only child of two factory workers in a small town called Black Pepper. It is not so far from St. Petersburg. He was an only child but maybe that was why he had five children of his own.

After attaining a BA in metallurgy, he had become a sub manager in a factory in the 1990s. He had a bit of spare money. In the 1990s he began to play the stock market. Mr. Cash had applied his trademark military level of discipline and hyper-focus to that. He must have developed a formula to buying shares. In those days Russians could not simply move to Moscow. They needed to have a Moscow residency permit. These were hard to come by unless of course you had oodles of money. Mr. Cash was able to buy one.

Mr. Cash had made a staggering amount of money without being suspected of being in the FSB. He avoided the limelight and kept aloof from politics. He also showed liberality in his benefactions to the Orthodox Church and certain sports.

Later on he had gone to a provincial university in the United Kingdom. He had become a fan of a local football team.

At school Mr. Cash had learnt German and spoke the language to a near native standard. His Italian was not bad either. He was a multitalented man and a go-getter. I grudgingly respected him despite him being in many ways dislikable.

Mr. Cash was very petty. But it was precisely this exacting attitude that had netted him unimaginable riches.

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GUESTS

Guests came. Volodya was an obese lawyer with flawless English. His wife had had so much work done that she had no facial expression. Let me call her Olga. She spoke perfect English too despite being Russian. They had a chubby 4 year old daughter. The porky little girl and Nastya – the 3 year old daughter of the boss – had a fruit off. They were saying ”A t’ye arbuz” / ”A t’ye applesin” /”A t’ye yabloko” and so on – saying fruits to each other. Nastya was a divinely beautiful baby.

I later found out that Volodya was only 34 though he looked much older. Weight is very ageing. His wife was probably a few years younger. But her ill-conceived and totally unnecessary face lift had made her look inhuman.

Volodya came with a nanny called Oxana. She was a hefferlump of a woman aged 40 or so. I spoke Russian to her. The first night when Volodya and his crew were there we dined in round tables by the rectangular pool. The boss, his wife, Volodya and his wife were on the other table. The children, the nannies and I sat at another one. Then Volodya said that Oxana was from Moldova. He had heard that I spoke Romanian. Oxana spoke no English so she and I were to converse in the Romanian tongue. I had been listening to Russian and Italian all day as well as speaking some English. I occasionally spoke German to the boys. Now my mind was whirring. I struggled to summon up the Romanian words. What were the Romanian words for good evening? I dredged them up. ”Buna seara”. They came fitfully at first. Little by little the words came. It took me some minutes to get into my stride. Then I was in command of the language and we babbled away in our language uncomprehended by all around us. I asked her if she was not stunned that an Irishman spoke Romanian. She said that she was not. I was deflated.

Olga and Volodya were totally indifferent to their child. The toddler was the sole responsibility of the nanny. It begs the question why they chose to have a child at all.

Mr. Cash played chess against his lawyer. It was a real battle of the titans. I could tell the boss was putting everything into this. It was no mere game. His lawyer used to play semi-professionally. I do not think the game finished.

Later there was another guest with long hair. This Russian lived in Cyprus with his wife – also Russian. They had a 7 year old daughter who was full of beans. The man had a 21 year old daughter from a previous marriage.

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The toddler girls liked to listen to an album called ‘Baby Dance’. It included numbers such as tac a ta. It also included Felicita. There was ”bambino, destino, canolino.”

I have long tried to find that album with those toddlers’ songs in Italian. I have been unable to find it.

I would address the Italians servants as ”Gentile donne d’Italia”. I established a good relationship with them. There was Rita the reasonable looking 30 something. There was Selene the obese 40 year old divorcee. I gallantly said I thought she was 26. What a kind lie that was. Despite her ugliness I fornicated with her later. Sorry to my at the time girlfriend – the mermaid of Baku. Lust conquers all! Selene came to my room at night or first thing in the morning. She said she confided only in one other maid – her friend – what we had done.

One time Selene was washing dishes in the kitchen. I snuck up behind her and cupped her boobs with my hands. She yelped and went the colour of beetroot – then she realized it was me and rather liked it. She had not been touched by a man for a few years before I had come along.

There was Franca who was 5- something and pouted behind her pink painted lips. There was the major domo. The major domo was born the same year as Princess Diana as I brought to her attention. The boss had light brown hair cut in a mature woman’s chin length bob. She was slender and her face was prettyish. Her husband was the head gardener.

I later vouchsafed to these women that I had a child and showed them the photo. They called me professore. The Russian one was the only one who could sustain a conversation in English. She called me professor in English. I had to tell her that this is only for someone who teaches in a university. She spoke reasonable English on account of her having had an American paramour. She now had a Senegalese boyfriend. Down by the beach I sometimes saw Senegalese chaps selling counterfeit Louis Vuitton bags. These men were probably illegals. I ungenerously reflected that the two sets of rejects had gone for each other – the Russian and the Senegalese were shunned by Sardinian society.

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We went swimming in the sea daily. We would do 200 m in all. It was frightfully good for my health and athleticism. The sea was as clear as can be despite the engine oil. There were many beige rocks littering the sand seabed. Occasionally we spotted jelly fish and I discovered that the Russian word for one of these is medusa like the hag of Ancient Greek myth.

We sailed to the north of the island for luncheon one day to La Maddalena. Igor had to stand guard outside for two hours. How incredibly dull. But in his line of work one must get used to it. I suppose it appeals to the empty headed.  I wonder if the house had a gym for the guards to build up their biceps.

We sailed to Corsica. We went to Bastia. Then we sailed around to the east of Corsica to Porto Vechio.

In Porto Vechio we dined at a harbourside restaurant. I was on a table with the boys. The cheapest dish cost 100 Euros.

The waiter served me a glass of wine which I drank. I apologise to Mr. Cash. He said, ‘’It is ok.’

The waiter spoke English and told the diners about a dish containing ananas. Later I told the man that in English it is pineapple. But the Russians understood because pineapple in Russian is ananas. For some reason that word is the same in 40 European languages.

On another occasion we sailed around Sardinia. We went to Porto Torres and Alghero.

In Porto Torres. We spoke Rooski on the street as we climbed the winding narrow streets up to the tiny cathedral. The promontory commanded the most breathtaking panorama over a gorgeous expanse of azure sea. The Mediterranean stretched as far as the eye could see. A light breeze rolled in off the brine. The sky had barely a spot of cloud. It was an idyllic scene. Here was natural beauty worth the breath under my ribs. How fortunate I was to behold such splendour and be paid for it. An old woman asked me in Italian where I was from. I replied that I was from Ireland. She asked which language we were speaking – so I told her Irish.

In Alghero we walked around the sea walls. The city was scintillating and packed with history. It is very well preserved. I enjoyed it a lot but we had to stand up a lot. I spoke to the boys as much as possible to fill their minds with information.

I was astonished to see so many signs in Catalan. I had known that Catalan was spoken in Sardinia but here was the proof. I had once thought that it was spoken throughout the isle but no only on the west coast.

Sardinia Piedmont was the fiefdom of the house of Savoy. This became the royal family of Italy. It was odd to think that this rocky island had in a sense united Italy and dominated it for almost a century.

In Porto Vechio we had a walk around. Igor accompanied us. He was no longer a gorilla towards me. He had me keep my eyes out for Kirill. Igor told me to behave as a bodyguard.

We saw a pick-up truck go by. Some were in pink shirts and capes were in it. I was explaining that they were priests in ecclesiastical purple marking the Feast of the Assumption. Volodya cut me off and said they were gays celebrating the passing of same sex marriage in France. He smiled benignly. Few Russians have such an indulgent attitude to towards this orientation.

On the water slide I would have to go down first. Igor said no one must get into the water without him – he meant the children. He would ask me how to say things in English.

This gig was a trial. If I succeeded I would be offered a job with them in Moscow. I would be with the boys who lived with their mother most of the time. However, I had messed up and doubted that I would be given the job. Moreover, Mr. Cash was too demanding a taskmaster. I thought I would probably turn it down if offered. Even though I would be chiefly under the superintendence of his ex-wife I did not want anything to do with Mr. Cash.

My time with the Cash’s came to an end. I was driven to Olbia Airport.

On the flight I sat beside a French cougar. This tall and lissome lady in late middle aged had a deep tan that had hardly aged her skin. She was unafraid to show plenty of flesh. Her ash blonde hair , gracile legs and knowing smile got my pulse racing. I chatted amiably with her on the short flight to Geneva. There was a magnificent visa over the Mediterranean before we came in over the Alps. In Geneva I then boarded a flight to London.

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What did I glean from the plutocrat? I learned lessons in life that every fable tells – that we already know. Money does not guarantee happiness. He was fairly happy but he was not 1 000 000 000 times happier than me as his wealth would warrant. He can afford anything he wants. He could pay to have me killed. The man has more money than many small countries. What did he get his glee from? He derived his gratification from family life, from good food and from exercise. Perhaps the only costly thing that gave him satisfaction was his yacht. Time is the only factor limiting his enjoyment because like all men the grave stalks him. So why waste time being pissed off? He went out of his way to find problems. He got hacked off over fluff on the carpet. He had no patience. Why should he be forgiving? He could afford not to be. As mortality was his only problem why dream up more?

I was very glad to be driven to the airport. I left a few hours earlier than necessary. It was great to fly out of there. As I said farewell to the beautiful Fiona I said, ”I would be your boyfriend any time you want.” She invited me for a hug.

This was a trial in a sense. They did not ask me to go permanent. If they had offered it this would have entailed living with the boss’ ex-wife because she had the boys most of the time. They were planning to bring the yacht up the River Moscow for the eldest boy’s birthday in the autumn. They would sail to the Caribbean at Christmas. Russian Christmas is after ours. Gordon had often had to work over Christmas. The family told him very little. I had to feed him scraps of information. There was a lot of last minute chopping and changing.

I was glad when the parents were away. I could work unsupervised. I was not kept on for several reasons. My Maths was not up to it. I committed a faux pas at table. They did not think I was energetic enough. Playing games – but there were no balls or anything.

The eldest boy liked to watch that film with those blue creatures.

The kindly old guard had laughed to hear me speak Romanian with Oxana. He was mightily impressed. He never got to swim poor chap.

It was bewildering for him and Igor to be in with the crew. They had no common language.

The first mate had told me it was very well paid but hard work. They did not get a day off for weeks sometimes. He could only walk into his cabin sideways. But when the family were away they were tied up in port. They were paid and had very little to do. It seemed horrendous for some crew members not to get to swim. The stewardesses had a hard job. Cleaning lavatories. But you could be 18 and stupid and still land the job. Very well paid it was too

LIFE WITH THE GOLDEN HORDE

This is a fictive tale. The characters sketched here in are figments of my creativity. This is about working for the undeserving rich.

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I worked for a couple of years as a tutor to family from Centrasia. Very volatile, vapid, vain, choleric, captious, revengeful, petty, conceited, brash, brusque, boastful, meretricious, listless, mendacious, materialistic, servile, spiteful, self-indulgent, self-devoted, wasteful, ignorant, illogical, unmannerly, egocentric, egomaniacal, unlearned, recalcitrant, niggardly, Falstaffian, gluttonous, witless, talentless, avaricious, malingering, credulous, contemptible, flighty, ostentatious, injudicious, risible, uncultured, bigoted, homophobic, sanctimonious, pharisaical, forktongued, sacrilegious, whingeing, thoughtless and criminous poseurs they were too. This is a droll and rollicking tale of excess and unpardonable folly. But it is also a story of unforgivable cruelty and parasitism. To read this you will need a strong stomach. It is a nauseating tale of the undeserving rich.

‘Twas at the time of the crash I found myself chatting to a Russian agent on the phone. I was in Araby and at a loose end. I was taking my parents and Turkish girlfriend out to dinner. That was when the phone rang or more accurately buzzed. I spoke to Sergey and thought little more about it. I often got calls that lead nowhere. I also had a skype interview with Sharif who was Mr. Golden’s assistant. He told me that Golden was a workaholic. Golden has an unusual hobby: shooting wolves from a helicopter.

In Centrasia things move slowly. This is a region that relies on fossils turning into oil – a process that takes eons. Their byzantine bureaucracy also moves at a glacial pace.

It was six weeks later as I endured a hellish time tutoring two brats in Moscow that Sergey called back. I was hired. The head of the Golden Horde had picked me as his tutor. I knew little about Mr. Golden other than the head a construction company.

The Golden Horde has been given this moniker since they hail from the steppes of Central Asia. Many centuries ago a clan of great hardihood roamed that region and were known as the Golden Horde. These fearsome warriors spread rapine and ruin. Despite their barbarity they at least achieved something. This is more than can be said for the new Golden Horde. The Golden Horde (meaning the crooks I worked for) have that name as a pun because they hoarded gold. I was about to have an education in the material wealth and spiritual poverty.

I resigned from my job and flew to London. Two weeks later I was on a plane to Eastern Europe where Mr. Golden was based at that time. I cooled my heels in a four start hotel until finally summoned to meet the enigmatic Mr. Golden. I was driven by one of this underlings. This chap was also from Centrasia and spoke English almost flawlessly. He vouchsafed that Golden was under 40.

I then spent another day lounging around a hotel on a mountaintop resort. It was a chilly though splendid spring day.  In an idle moment I wandered outside the hotel. The ventilation was bracing outside. The fresh fragrance of forest flowers was heady indeed.

That afternoon there was to be a conference. The Big Wig was coming in. He had assembled all his chiefs from all over Eastern Europe. I wore my whistle and flute. One of Golden’s underbosses had me there to introduce me. I had my books and the man said ”be ready”. I was.

The underboss and I waited outside the main door of the conference room. Inside easily 100 executives were assembled at about 10 different tables. Three-quarters of them were male. There was a dais and a screen.

At last Mr. Golden was approached the door of the conference hall. He was accompanied by a skinny young interpreter and a well-built bodyguard. The bodyguard was wearing a suit like everyone else but through it you could see that this young man was all thew.  They both cut quite a contrast to Golden. Golden was perhaps 6’3” in height and girth. This was the only sense that he was a ’rounded’ individual. He was broad shouldered and he had a belly you could put on the table. His triple chin was just the start of a shining corona of lard that surrounded his foolish face. Mr. Golden had a pudding bowl haircut and suitably witless expression to match. His face was so fat that he appeared to be of indeterminate gender. I was later to learn that by my judgment of his face I had hugely overestimated him.  He was slightly swarthy and had Mongoloid features. He had a buzz cut and was clean shaven though it looked as though hardly any hair ever sprouted on his superabundant jowls. He wore a dark blue suit. He walked ponderously as much from arrogance as indolence. He must have had a Body Mass Index close to 40. Everyone is entitled to be obese but he really abused the privilege.

The sottocapo hurried up to Golden and greeted him obsequiously. Golden listened and answered in Russian. Golden’s voice was bassoprofondo and toneless. Someone with this bland voice tends to be a person of low intelligence and no empathy. Underboss introduced me. Golden turned his countenance towards mine. We exchanged greetings in Soviet and I shook his chubby paw. I was to discover that his egregious lassitude had turned him into an elective invalid.

Then we were ushered into the conference room. I saw on empty seat at a table in the middle of the room. I hastened to plonk my buttocks down. Then I was told in no uncertain terms that this was for Golden. I had to hurry off. I found a seat at a table in the back of the hall.

The slender brown haired youth I had seen outside sat in a translation booth. There he translated. Golden put headphones on. He was the only person in the room who could not understand English. Why was he put in charge of a multinational? His academic skills were evidently the worst out of over 100 people present. Even his goon of a bodyguard spoke passable English. I too placed headphones on. I listened to the Russian. I assiduously noted down new words. Otherwise this conference was deathly dull. Did I really want to know how steel price fluctuations impacted on the quarterly budget forecast in Bulgaria?

I later spoke to the interpreter. What nationality was likely to be proficient in both Romanian and Russian? Naturally he was Moldovan. He spoke splendid English too with but a mild accent.

Next day I bunked off on the conference and went to the gym and pool. Would they care? They were never punctilious.

In the evening we all gathered for dinner. I sat beside the underboss. Some of the Hungarian executives chatted to me. They were surprised that I spoke a smattering of their language. I said I had spent two years there. In what capacity? I did not want to reveal my previous job since that would give them a good clue as to what my current role was. Underboss had said to me in Russian that I should claim to be an adviser to Mr. Golden. That was half true.

There was dancing. Mr. Golden’s meaty hand took that of others. We stood up and danced in a circle. Golden was an observant Muslim and forswore spirituous liquor. But he was not fundamentalist and was not averse to mixed sex dancing. He was no terpsichorean but I was impressed that he was liberal minded enough to enjoy such fun.

There was traditional Romanian dancing. Young men in those white shepherd folk costumes danced. A young Romanian woman in a daring cocktail dress and very thick makeup took the microphone and harangued us in English to dance. She then led the dance.

Mr. Golden stood up and shook shapes. He had us all stand in a circle and hold hands and ‘dance’ after a fashion.

The next day I got up earlyish. Underboss told me that Golden had already left. I was then driven to the capital in the company of a German and a Tatar. I was put up in a hotel. The next day I was taken to the airport and flown out to ”Lakeland” via Frankfurt.

I had to get a train from the airport to ” Laketown”, Switzerland. I was met by a chauffeur and taken to a most magnificent hotel. There I was accommodated in royal style. I did not know it at the time but I was treated to 10 days of luxury with no work required. It was a serendipitous existence. I later discovered that the hotel I was in was owned by an Eastern European construction magnate. This gentleman had been president of Illyria. The Illyrian elite were very cosy with the Central Asians.

Laketown is a where Putin’s purported wife Alina Kabaeva parturated his second in about 2012. The small town is renowned for its superb private clinics and sanatoria.

On the first day I got up breakfasted and put my suit on in short order. I was waiting for a call to go and attend to Mr. Golden. I waited and waited and waited. I had a good time studying and watching you tube. I chatted to Golden’s underling back in Centrasia on skype. No word from the boss man. This was something I would get used to. I was underused. Fine by me. The company was paying so what did Golden care?

Day after day passed like this. The word came from Astana to take it easy. When they wanted me they would give me plenty of notice.

I mostly dealt with Uthman in Astana. The narrow eyed little Kazakh told me that the year before Mr. Golden had hired a fitness instructor from Moscow. After six months Mr. Golden had not done a single fitness session. The instructor was then told that he was surplus to requirements. I was beginning to suspect that this might happen to me.

I was able to take walks along the shore of a beauteous and tranquil lake. I looked across to another country on the far shore. I admired the very steep mountains that shot up from the lakeside. I observed furious snowstorms on the white peaks. I wandered into drowsy villages and bought a few comestibles at a minimarket. I made conversation in the local language with the dumpy middle aged woman working there who was soon calling me ”love”.  Jobs do not come easier than that.

Mr. Golden was president of his nation’s boxing federation despite never having entered the ring in his life. This was to be a recurring theme. There was a compelling need to emphasise his machismo. Why did he and his family feel obliged to assert their manliness and associate with musclemen and be surrounded by guns? I suspect it was due to a deep seated psychological problem. As the saying goes of women, ”If you have to say that you are a lady you probably ain’t.”

I had plenty of time to explore the gorgeous lakeside town. Mountains shot up from the lake’s placid shore. I could see snowstorms swirling on the peaks as I basked in the relative mildness of the vale. The lake was rich in ichthyology. The valley was splendidly verdant, spotless and tranquil. However, it tended to be damp and misty on account of the lake.

The other shore of the lake was Italy. I was in the only Italian speaking canton in Switzerland.

I walked around the town and bought a local Lika simcard from an Italian young female hawking them on the street. She was average height had a pretty enough face and her dark brown hair tied back carelessly. The blue T shirt that the company made her wear did not flatter her. Though she was in her early 20s she already had a bit of a smoker’s voice.

I ambled the streets as I had nothing to do but study property law.

In the hotel I found it hard to tear myself away from YouTube videos on Walter’s world. I also watched anything on history and politics.

Sometimes I got room service – coffee with cold milk. An obsequious middle aged Albanian male delivered it.

In reception and obese but pretty young German lady worked. Her auburn hair was tied back with an Alice band. She spoke very good English. But did not know what a pencil once. ‘Bleischrift’ I had to tell her when I wanted one. I discovered in Italian it is matita.

There was a slim Italian brunette aged about 30 on reception and her name was Gloria. She spoke with mezzo soprano voice and answered the phone ‘Io sono Gloria.’ She was very good looking and I considered asking her on a date.

There was another young Italian female on the front desk. But I learnt that she had a baby and a boyfriend to boot so concluded that asking her out might be foolhardy. She was in her early 20s so must have been the youngest mother in Italy.

The town had many Kosovars in it. There were Albanians newspapers to be read. The Mabetex construction company was very involved. I later found out that the company is also very active in Kazakhstan. The plot thickened.

The male receptionists were always very well presented, good natured and efficient.

Two of the hotel porters were Albanian. We conversed in Italian.

‘Como stai?’ I asked a grey haired slim Albanian with glasses as he stood outside the hotel.

He chewed gum and grinningly replied, ‘Muy bien gracias.’

‘Porche te a respondate in spagnolo?’

‘Porche tu a chiedato in spagnolo. In Italiano e come stai’ he said. ‘Parlo quarto lingue e sono tutto autodidatico’ he said proudly.

There was a free minibus shuttle into town. I took it a few times. It was a 10 minute drive. A bellhop in a blue tunic drove it. He was a slim and geled hair young Albanian. I happened to bump into him a few days later in town when he was off duty and in casuals. We chatted in Italian. He seemed to warm to me. I was not the sort of guest who looked down his nose at the staff.

I shared the shuttle into town one time with an elderly Australian couple. They asked what I was doing there. I said I was working for an oil company which was true in a way.

The town had many high end shops. It had a pretty lakeside park. Strangely there was even a forbidding dark grey stone English church.

I got onto some dating website. I connected with a buxom strawberry blonde Russkaya in Milan. Milan was only an hour’s drive away. Her name was Sasha and she was a few years my junior.

One evening I took the train for Milan and went for a date with her. I met her and though she looked sulky I fancied her. She had E cup tits. How could I not? We dined in a superb buffet place near Stazione Centrale and spoke in my halting Italian and Russian. I suggested we check into a hotel. After an evening of vigorous sex I was more than satisfied. The #180 quid on the hotel had been well worth it.

In the hotel next morning I chatted to a tiny Taiwanese woman who was tour guide to some people from mainland China.

I had Sasha come to stay with me in Swiss Diamond Hotel. She was most impressed. There was a lot of hard sex in the morning.

At breakfast she wore her miniskirt. She had slim and firm legs. This did not fit with her top half: she had a big belly and gigantic tits. They were almost offensively large.

There was an 80 year old very small Italian made who saw people into the dining room for breakfast. The white haired bespectacled man wore a suit that looked like it had just been dry cleaned. When he saw Sasha’s décolletage the old man almost fainted – so much blood going to the geriatric’s cock.

After I had digested I would go to the gym. A good workout on the exercise bike and cross trainer and weights would get the testosterone going. Then back up to the room for a hard fuck of Sasha again.

After one such energetic fuck Sasha suddenly burst into tears. Had I done something wrong? No, she had been through a lot. She was living with an Italian in Turin a few months earlier. Her boyfriend had dumped her. The year before that her father had dropped dead at the age of 55.

The place had a splendid indoor swimming pool and Turkish bath. I availed myself of both and the Finnish sauna and the Russian sauna.

I visited nearby towns such as Bellinzona and Locarno. The latter was known to me for its pact of 1925.

Switzerland is notoriously pricey. I strove to keep expenses down.

I was also keen to shed weight. I forewent dinner some days. But a relative had died the previous month. I knew it was wrong to worry too much about money. There are no pockets in shrouds.

It was Easter in Switzerland. I had to tell them to stop putting complimentary choc in my room.

Once breakfast was served in the rooftop restaurant. Though it was 8 o clock in the morning the manager there incongruously wore a white dinner jacket.

In the gym I met a French black family there. The mother and father had three daughters in their late teens or early 20s.

I remember being given time off. This was welcome. But I was unpaid for it. I managed to make it to my nephew’s first communion.

The trouble was I had no idea how long my involuntary holiday would last. One week turned into three.

I was summoned back to Laketown. No booking had been made in Swiss Diamond Hotel. I lodged in a less pricey one. I tried to pick up the tall and slender Polish blonde in her early 20s. The gracious young lady decorously turned me down.

Mr. Golden’s underlings complained that I was blowing a hole in their budget. I suggested they economise by putting me in a cheaper hotel. This they did and I lodged in Hotel Delfino. It was still most agreeable but nothing like as luxurious as the aptly named Swiss Diamond Hotel.

Sasha was there on her birthday. I had suggested Greek love to her. This she willingly agreed to. She had done it many times before. I even gave her some on her birthday. She later regretted doing that on her birthday of all days.

Mr. Golden’s wife and children were in town. His kids attended the American School in Switzerland (TASIS). I suggested that I earn my pay by tutoring his wife or children. But nothing came of it.

I was with Mr. Golden in Romania for about 5 days. The in Switzerland for 2 weeks. Then I had 3 weeks off. Then I was back in Switzerland for another 2 weeks. Then I was sent to Kazakhstan for a week. Then I had two weeks off that I did not ask for. Then I was summoned to Romania.

In Switzerland I was told to be ready to go to the airport. I donned a suit and tie. A car picked me up and drove me to the miniscule Lugano Airport. There I met Dima – he was the Russian-Kazakh with a widow’s peak and was aged about 45. He was knowing, understated, slim, and sallow. Dima spoke superb English.

In the terminal I met Mr. Golden. Bizarrely he wore a tracksuit. I suppose they are almost pajamas so comfoertbale to sleep in. He was bluff and spoke but sparling.

‘’Na semelyot budyet pyervi urok’’,

‘’Da’’, I nodded. I had just enough Russian to comprehend him. I had bought EFL books on his account.

We boarded a business jet that could seat 12. But the only passengers were myself, Mr. Golden, a middle aged Kazakh woman and a youngster who seemed to be her son.

On the plane Golden changed into slippers. It was just so Soviet!

I spoke to the German air hostess – Maren. She told me that it was a no pork flight on account of the passengers being Muslim.

On board a business jet from Switzerland to Kazakhstan I finally did a lesson with Mr. Golden.  We opened an elementary English book and he did a page under my direction. Mostly he slept.

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THE FAMILY

I was to get an introduction to the weird world of billionaire trash.

It was almost a year after I was hired by Golden that I was flown to Centrasia to teach his offspring. I arrived before dawn in midwinter. The temperature outside was – 28. I was greeted at that small airport by a lanky Russian who was perhaps over 30 years of age. He must have been 6’3” and had mid brown hair that was slightly receding. Lanky had a thin face and those sulky lips that are so very Slavic. He was also meeting an Azeri named Ahmed. I had not buttoned everything up as we approached the exit of the terminal. Lanky stopped and told me I had better button up. Who was he, my mother? He was younger than me. But Lanky knew of what he was talking. I am very glad I took his counsel. I buttoned up and stepped out. A wall of the most gelid air imaginable hit me. My cheeks stung with cold. I felt the roots of my teeth freeze.

We hurried to the car. Lanky drove us through the winterscape. The one conversation that was off topic was the Ukraine – so had said the agent who gave me the job. Sure enough the very first topic in conversation that Lanky broached was – the Ukraine. I chose to keep my opinions to myself on that one. Ahmed professed himself to be an outspoken admirer of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin. Not much had changed since 1991. Lenin’s admirer was dropped off at a hotel.

The car drew up at a grim grey 10 storey block of flats. It could have been anywhere in the former Soviet Bloc. It was the sort of bland and functional residential block that I am well used to. Out we hopped and up the stairs. The plain white walls were at least in decent nick. It was pitch black outside. Lanky knocked on the door of the flat. The door was opened by a flat faced and bespectacled Centrasian woman and the change in temperature was very striking. Soviets have their flats hot. Very hot! There was an entrance hall with racks for shoes and a carpet there. I was to share an entrance hall with another flat. We had been greeted by a round faced Centrasian woman who was approaching middle age and she spoke brilliant English. Turns out she was a lecturer. She was in a bright but plain house dress that did nothing to flatter her rotund figure. This is a very special sort of dress that women in the former USSR wear when they feel like slipping into something unsexier. Then an Asiatic young woman came along. She wore a black furcoat with the hood up. She was thin and the coat made her almost disappear in it. She was an estate agent. There were forms to sign. Turned out that Aysel lived in the flat that shared an entrance hall with mine. She shared it with her husband and two children as well as her brother-in-law, his wife and child.

Into my flat. Lanky took off his ankle boots. He showed me around the one bedroom flat. When the landlady was out of earshot he whispered to him that she had said she did not wanting me smoking there or bringing girls around. Well at least I never smoked.

The formalities were done. It was time to shake hands and let Lanky go. He was a sidekick of Mr. Golden so he had more kowtowing to do. I found him a decent sort. His English was almost satisfactory. We conversed in Russian mostly. I hit the hay. The estate agent and the landlady Aysel had gone.

I awoke several hours later. I dressed with 7 layers on my upper half. I headed out into the gelid temperature. I felt like Scot of the Antarctic. It was -28. I had been sitting down or lying down for almost 24 hours. Therefore I was bounding with energy. I walked for miles through the snowbound city. There were many wide spaces between buildings. I still got cold. It started to become dangerous. I had not an ob in the local currency. At length I came to a cash machine and managed to make a withdrawal. I had a snack in a cafe and got a taxi back to the music hall. That was opposite where I dwelt. En route we passed the supreme court. The Oriental cabbie told me the boast of the country, ”Our camels are very tough.”

A few days later I was finally summoned to meet the family. I stood in front of the grey five storey Soviet era block of flats. The uneven car park was thickly blanketed in fresh snow.  The wind whipped across the snowscape beyond the car park. There were many buildings of several storeys close by. Most were occupied but a few were derelict of half-built.

A car came to the car park of the block of flats. I do not remember who drove it because they had several drivers. The land was thickly carpeted with snow. The vehicle drove perhaps 15 minutes to the family’s compound. The land was flat and a few trees punctuated the endless plains. The countryside was mostly empty. A few bungalows lined the route. Areas of land were fenced off. A shack by the gate of their compound underscored the poverty in which most Turcomans live.

There was a black metal gate. A hawk faced but undersized guard in an entirely black army uniform stood there. He was not big and therefore tried very hard to look mean. He almost succeeded. He drew his mouth down and wrinkled his chin. Thankfully he did not display his khalashnikov this time. He always struck a truculent pose when I came along.

Out of the car. A few steps to the large bungalow that was the house. The abode did not appear to be huge but I was later to discover there was a huge basement. There were glass walls with white curtains around them. The door was opened by a butler. I say butler since I do not know how else to describe this sort of man servant. The house was uncomfortably warm as Soviet houses usually are. There was the terrace as they call it – the outer part of the house. It was simple but not spartan. Almost everything was white and pristine. There were two tables and several chairs in a very wide but very short room – if that makes any sense. The floor was white marble and highly polished. In fact the whole house had a floor like that but there were a few rugs around. The garish decor was the sort that gives the nouveaux riches a bad name. I was told to sit on a sofa. I was there twiddling my thumbs for 10 minutes. This was something I would have to get used to. Time wasting was this family’s main pastime.

The house was where chintzy met kitsch. The family could have been from Essex: tonnes of money and absolutely no taste. Almost everything was white and the place was very well lit. The furniture was minimalist.  I will hand it to them cleaning staff: it was spotless. These slave drivers were good at insisting the place was tidy. These people were clean in everything except their money.

Then a door opened to the main part of the house. In came a short and very skinny woman who looked no more than 25. She was accompanied by two boys in their early teens and by a little boy.

They greeted me. We shook hands. Her soft and tiny hands had surely never touched a dish washer. The mother was 10 years older than she looked. She spoke good English and inquired if I spoke Russian. I treated her to a blast of Russian. The point was more than proven. She could have passed for the sister of her eldest son. He was 15 and she was 33 at the time.

As tea was served. I asked the boys about themselves – their hobbies, their strengths and weaknesses at school.

The eldest fellow was emperor. He was in his mid-teens and skinny as a rake. He had brown eyes a messy mass of semi-curly black hair. He had a tendency to talk out of the corner of his mouth. I would also learn that he had a tendency to talk out of his arse – if you know what I mean. He sometimes involuntarily spat as he spoke. He never covered his mouth when he yawned but considered himself to be the very summit of sophistication. He had a pale Afghan face. Emperor had some redeeming characteristics. Over time the negative side of his personality became more pronounced. He managed to combine exceptional arrogance with an extraordinary lack of sophistication and shocking level of torpor. Two years later we were to part on bad terms. But I did not know that when I first met him.

The next in the line of succession was named Bright. It was a cruel irony that his name was singularly inapposite. It was as though fate was playing a cruel practical joke on him that his parents had bestowed such a name on him. Bright was the one who resembled his father most closely in terms of physique. He lacked muscle tone. It was as though he had a mild case of Down’s Syndrome though he was tall. An amorphous, sallow face clung around his prominent Asiatic cheekbones and straight back hair hung down to his eyebrows. He also had that monotone and displeasing voice. He was well above average height and his build was beefy. His puppy fat and leaden footed gait indicated that he would be a corpulent adult. There was a dullness to his brown eyes and a languor to his manners and movements. He had just entered his teens. Bright had not a single good feature to his character. He had many faults and they were severe. We had many candid one on one discussions. He told me plainly of all his wickedry but he did not consider it to be misconduct. Bright boasted of hitting smaller children. Bright’s unseemly zeal for the death penalty said much about him. His hobby was slobbing around. He was a deeply contemptible and unattractive character.

Lastly there was Milk. Milk was in the middle of Primary School. I call him Milk since he was a milksop and a little immature for his age as though still fed on milk. His hair was parted in the centre and he wore little round glasses. He was reserved and avoided eye contact. He was close to the autistic spectrum and at first his voice was expressionless. I was later to discover that this was solely due to diffidence. In time he gave voice to the full range of emotions. He was in fact by far the sharpest mind and the only one with something approaching a tolerable work ethic. Milk was the only likable child. There was almost nothing bad about him. I just hope he does not go the way of his siblings.

There was also an infant girl but I did not meet her at that stage.

These are not apercus that I arrived at instantly. It took a couple of years to fully get the measure of them.

The mother would look at me but her semi-hooded dark eyes were constantly darting away. That said a lot about her. She never fully engaged with her interlocutor. I would only gradually come to discover the depth of her vacuity. She never thought about anyone else – including her children. Her features were fairly Oriental. I later discovered they were not as distinctly Oriental as one might expect since he was a quarter Ukrainian. Her jet black hair was carefully brushed. She only ever wore minimal makeup. Her faintly yellow skin was as unblemished as can be. She must have had the priciest skin creams on the market. Though her face was easy on the eye I never found her an object of lust. Her body was too unwomanly for that. It was hard to believe that she had squeezed out a sprog not half a year before. There was not a pinch of lipid on her tiny frame. Her slenderness made a huge contrast from her husband who ate for 3. Add the two together and split the difference – would you get two average adults? No, the father was so overweight that the two would be obese. I later found her to be the most self-regarding and tight fisted person on the planet. She did not even enjoy her unjust deserts. She had not even had the gumption to acquire these ill-gotten gains herself. Her sense of entitlement to fabulous wealth, to deference and to inconvenience others was staggering. It all went to show that there is very little justice in the world.

We took tea served by an obsequious butler. These butlers never wore butler’s uniform. Instead they were good jeans and a smart shirt. Note that everyone was barefoot here unless they wore slippers. Shoes were removed at the door. Centrasians have that Soviet monomania with footwear.

Later I set off with the two eldest boys to the cinema. We went in a minibus. One of their 8 or so drivers was at the wheel. We were accompanied by Turar who was a bodyguard. This youth of 25 had a very East Asian face. It would appear that not s single follicle had sprouted on his countenance. Emperor had asked Turar is he was of Korean stock but Turar assured them that he was a plain Centrasian. Turar was 5’10’’: so tall for a man of his race. A handshake indicated that he had powerful biceps. He was agreeable and never tried to overawe me. I instantly sensed that he respected me. I did not get that feeling from some of the other staff. This man did not gurn his face into an attempt at an intimidating expression. Turar had a handgun in his belt. They must have been a family of very lofty status for this to be permitted. I was to come to know Turar. He was amiable though reticent. I deduced that he was lacking in self-belief. He did not try too hard to stress his tough guy status. He did not sport a buzz cut.

The minibus drove us about 15 minutes. We crossed over the ice bound river. The skyscrapers of Ashgabad were soon upon us. We parked at Kernal Mall. Up we went to the cinema. It was Unbroken. I translated the bit of Italian – ”ascultate.” It was an enthralling though galling true tale about an Italian-American former Olympic athlete who was taken Prisoner of War by the Japanese in the Second World War. He suffered the most barbaric cruelties in Nippon.

Later we took dinner in a Japanese. I conversed easily with the boys. Turar ate too. I addressed him in English. He replied in Russian that he scarcely knew English. I then engaged him in conversation in that other language. At that stage I did not even know the word ”gavyadina” meaning ‘beef’. I demonstrated that I knew the opening verse of their national anthem. There were almost the only sentences in the Centrasian language that I knew. I thought it meet to emphasise that I knew much about their homeland and I pretended to respect it. I was to keep up this ruse for a long time to come! The bill was settled in dollars. Bright told me this was possible at elite restaurants. They were highly conscious that they belonged to a family out of the top drawer. This was not so much a case of blue blood and broad acres. It was more cold blood and bribe takers. Their unjust enrichment was very galling.

At the door I was told another motor was there to take me home. The older two went home. I made a decent first impression. Emperor later told me his dad had warned him I was strict. Strictness was something they really valued. Unless they were on the receiving end! They had no self -discipline. Had I tried to introduce discipline I would have been fired pretty quick.

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ROUTINE

Soon we settled into a routine. I would go to the gym and pool in the morn.  I would head to the Tent and print off some text that I had composed for the boys’ edification. These would be calibrated to be at their level with a few abstruse words thrown in for my delectation. Plus it is terribly dull to always write something at a low level. None of this lexis was too arcane! I would make myself available for work in the arvo. The driver would come anytime between 3 pm and 6 pm. I would usually be called beforehand. I would hang around the car park. The residents must have wondered what this foreign chap was doing loitering in the car park every afternoon. I stood out like a sore prick. My very first morning I had walked through the car park. A boy of about 10 was walking the other way. I do not think I greeted him first maybe he greeted me. Only a pleasantry issued from my lips before he said ”Vy Anglishani”?

I corrected him: ”Nyet, ya irlandets.”

It was dispiriting that my accent was so woeful that the child had fingered me as a foreigner instantly. There are plenty of people of Russian stock in the city so I could be taken for them.

I would be driven to their house. It was over the river and a few miles out of town. There were hoardings along a site being developed by the Vietnamese. The president had a retreat along that road. A low grey wall marked his compound. Tall trees grew behind it. His house was largely obscured. I think this was on purpose. Occasionally a helicopter plied its noisy way to the president’s country house. There was a drive off the main road and it was this drive that led to the president’s compound. A police car was permanently parked at the turn off. The land was as flat as a snooker table.

The gates would be opened manually by one of those guards in black uniform. The guards got to know me after a few weeks and no longer gooned their faces into something that was supposed to be menacing. The car or minivan would deposit me outside the house. I would approach the door to the terrace. It was always immaculately tidy. A butler would come and unlock it. They all had walkie talkies. I would be offered tea or coffee. I found these butlers to be affable. One was a wrestler – the sort of man’s man who so impressed Mr. Golden. This wrestler – Abram – did not swagger or stress his toughness. Despite being short he was self-assured.

One of the few commendable things about the Golden’s is their relative lack of racial or religious prejudice. They did not discriminate between Slavs and Mongolians in employment. Furthermore, they often wished Christians ”Happy Easter” and the like. Having said that they did favour people of their nationality (not ethnicity) when it came to holidays and medical care. Desis and Filipinos were considered untermensch – even if they professed the Islamic faith.

I would enter the house and be offered a drink by one of the Uzbek butlers. There were books in Russian piled high on the table. I would dip into them. There was a turgid introduction to law.  It tried to blind with terminology. There was much waffle about sociology and very little of substance about law. The periphrastination was much worse than anything I encountered in any textbook on English Jurisprudence. There were some volumes of Pushkin’s verse and I also cast my eye across those. A cursory look at Pushkin’s poems was enough to convince me of the man’s genius.

Only occasionally would I happen to see the father lumbering by. His heavy gait spoke of his gross feeding and shameful torpor. In all my months there I never had a substantial conversation with him.

I chatted a lot with Emperor. Conceptually he was fairly intelligent. He had an inquiring mind but a total disinclination to write. A Western publication had recently printed images of ” Peace and blessings upon him”. These were highly disobliging to the faithful. Some who had printed these pictures had been shot dead. Emperor told me that he did not exactly approve of these slayings but he did not disapprove either. These journalists had it coming to them. They were the authors of their own misfortune. I diplomatically pretended to think these images were an outrage. His ambivalent attitude to terrorism was something I would encounter continually. I showed exaggerated respect to his faith and he never smelt a rat. I had long since realised that dishonesty is the best policy. That seemed to be the family motto.Emperor was a braggart but not terribly so. He told me the family should be in Forbes for Central Asia on account of their staggering riches but they chose not to be for fear of attracting kidnappers. It was not out of modesty.

The boys were never facetious to me. They did not have the brains to be.

I would help the boys with their homework. I wrote texts on topics of their selection. I went to the tent and printed them out. These were reading comprehensions. Once I reached the house much time was wasted in winnowing the reading texts and finally selecting the one a boy wished to do that day. One of their pet topics was serial killers. Nice children! Only the oldest two had this very unhealthy obsession. When I asked them if they read by way of diversion they responded with circumlocution. Sounded like a ‘No’ to me.

At the start of a lesson I would review some of the information and vocab from the previous lesson. They would recollect some nuggets of information. They had a decent lexis but found phrase making to be taxing. I am fascinated by history and I hoped my enthusiasm would be contagious. Fortunately the eldest two liked history somewhat. I tread carefully – striving to avoid giving offence to their opinions. Islam must never be questioned. One could not slam the Soviet Government. Emperor was fair-minded enough to acknowledge that Stalin had starved millions of people to death. I did not prompt him on that one. What then of Stalin’s henchmen? Stalin’s successors were not radically different from the genius of genocide. It would be churlish to remind Emperor that his grandfather had been more than complicit in such crimes against humanity. What had his great-grandparents done at the height of the Stalin’s terror? They will have been adults in the 1930s. I shudder to think. Not that any of that will have been his fault?

Some days they would cancel. I was supposed to work Saturday and Sunday. I would be waiting and waiting and waiting. The call was supposed to come at 10 am. Sometimes it came at 1 pm. The boys got up very late on the weekend. Their lassitude was legendary. They said they played football and basketball at their house with their guards. I never saw this happen.

I increasingly saw how dysfunctional the family was. Being embedded with them was an education in how not to provide education. They considered themselves aristocrats but their conduct was anything but courtly.

Just occasionally Mr. Golden would be at home. I would see him lounging on the sofa – recumbent. His sons got their lethargy from him. On the rare occasions he saw me his face would be wreathed in smiles. He had heard well of me and would give me a hand on the shoulder.

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SECURITY ISSUES?

The black uniformed guards were the lowest status ones. They were all in their 20s and not necessarily physically imposing specimens. One was buck toothed and pop eyed but a decent sort. I noticed he disappeared after a couple of months though I did later see him at a bus stop quite by chance. There was a tall and fairly well built laconic type. This youthful guard as an Oriental like all the others. There was a scrawny chap who seemed unsuitable for such a role.  Above them were bodyguards who wore no uniform. These bodyguards accompanied the parents or the boys. They would go with the boys to school and pick them up but they did not wait at the school. The father went in a convoy of three cars. The mother even on her shopping trips went like this. Besides this there was a 3 m wall around the compound. Admittedly there was no razor wire atop the wall. Perhaps this indicates they did not really fear intruders otherwise they would have taken this elementary precaution. Alsatian dogs patrolled without handlers at night. When a guard opened the gate he was vulnerable. There were three gates. There was one guard on each gate. If they were actually in danger of being attacked why not have one gate and three guards on it? The gate was only held shut by a thin metal bolt. A car could easily ram it open.

These guards had crewcuts and even through cheap leather jackets their bulging muscles were evident. They were typical hard men. By their demeanour anyone could tell these boys were not to be messed with. The one I feared most was Arman. He had cheekbones like a gerbil and teeth to match.  His buzz cut was hardly needed to affirm his status. Though he was not a tall man he was built like a brick. I would not fancy taking a haymaker from him. These bodyguards had all served their time in the Central Army. Savage bullying was the order of the day. There was all the usual military stuff like polishing their boots till they shone like diamonds and jogging for miles with heavy packs. But the Asian Army went beyond that. The sergeants found it entirely acceptable to severely beat up the conscripts. The tougher conscripts would beat up the weaker ones. It was an utterly inhumane system. These men were so brutalised by this cruel system that it is little wonder some of them were warped by it. They boys often told me tales of how their guards had had to suffer the most grievous abuse in the army – running till they collapsed. Earl had had to go on a three day exercise without a morsel of food. On another occasion they were invited to dinner and encouraged to eat heartily. After three courses the young soldiers were then ordered out of the dining hall.

‘’Run!’’ their sergeant barked.

The young men could not believe it. Their bellies were full to the gunwhales. They were forced to do intense exercise – a run and then an assault course as they almost vomited. It was egregiously cruel and treacherous. It just typified Central Asian authorities. But I suppose they had to be ready. In a war you could be attacked just after dinner.

These men were as tough as can be but actually decent with it. These heavies were not to be provoked.

One of these guards was missing a tooth. How did that happen? You would not have asked.

I was told these men were not allowed to tell anyone who they worked for. Not even their wives – said Bright Soul. If they breathed a word of whom they worked for they would face a ruinous fine or else go to gaol. When Bright Soul told me that by blood ran cold. I had blabbered. I decided I must be silent as the grave about the horde.

At night Alsatians wandered the grounds without handlers. In the daytime they were kept in a cage. I never heard the canine yapping.

On one occasion the family took the guns off the guards at night – told them that they needed the firearms for cleaning. They then staged an attempted break-in to see how the men reacted – someone tried climbing the walls. The guards started chucking rocks.

This was a city of about 500 000. There was little crime and virtually none of it was violent. Every citizen was guaranteed an unfair trial. The prisons were especially brutal. Would anyone be foolish enough to attack a prominent family? Then again the family said their house in Black Town had been burgled. Were so many armed guards necessary? Was it all just an ego trip?  Was it not just armed snobbery? It is blatant that the father suffered from a crippling sense of inadequacy. This forced him to bolster his sense of manliness by having all these armed guards around. Moreover, hanging around with sportsmen underscored his own athleticism. He got exercise by lifting food to his face and he did plenty of that!

There is an amount of intra elite warfare as stated on wikileaks. The president allows this. He likes it so as it confirms his paramount status. This is neo-feudalism. The monarch lets the barons scrap to keep them relatively feeble and divided.

I really would not mix it with these bodyguards.

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THE GROUNDS

There was a large garage near the house. It contained about 5 cars with room for about 5 more. One of the cars had the registration number 010000. They must have paid a pretty kopeck for that one. Vanity plates they are called in America. The drivers hung out in a drab telly room beside the garage. A beige carpet covered the floor. The glum looking drivers conversed but tersely. I noticed they had that Soviet fixation with slippers. I took my footgear off at the door and stepped into the room.

‘’Tapuchki’’ a driver exclaimed as he thrust the slippers towards me.

There was a football pitch cum basketball court there which I never once saw being used.

The grandparents had a house on the same compound. I was never in that house. I occasionally met the grandparents in the main house.

There was a drive in garage under the main house. There were various storerooms down there. Because of this underground car park they could get into and out of the car without going out into the Arctic weather.

I was sometimes offered food. Sometimes it was horse meat. Occasionally it was the cake that Russians like best: Napoleon. It is a creamy almond cake. I usually loathe almonds but somehow this rich cake made them tolerable.

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STAFF

The family had three chefs but only one was on duty at any one time. There were three butlers but again usually only one was on duty. There were three nannies. There were several Filipino and Filipina cleaners. There were perhaps a dozen gardeners. I saw an Oriental woman and greeted her courteously in Russian. This tallish female replied to me in Asiatic English that she did not speak Russian since she was Filipina. That was how I came to know a much put upon maid named Maria.

I came to know all the indoor staff. I came to like them all. The black uniformed guards were all decent sorts as much as I knew them. The same was true of the drivers. I did not chat much when in the car. I thought it sagacious to be laconic at first. Later I would engage in dialogue and ask them to correct my Russian. They were all affable but for Zhanibek. There was something contumelious about his manner. He was a short, bald, poor, middle aged and podgy. What did he have to be arrogant about? On one drive I told him I had a child and he said he had three. He said it was bad to have only one. I did not give him the benefit of my wisdom: that it was moronic of a man as poor as him to have three children besides it being a burden on the planet.

The family had a little dog. Of course the lassitude of the family meant that they never walked the cur. The butler had to do that. What is the point in having a hound if you never walk it? The butler who took the doggy out tended to be the jovial Uzbek with prominent epicanthic folds.

Jay was a very convivial butler. He was perhaps 5’6” and slight of build. He had bushy mid brown hair that surmounted a delicate face. His nose was scarcely wider than his philtrum. This man was half Kazakh and half Tatar. He had grown up in a Siberian village where he was the only one who was not of the Russian race.

Redman Roman was a stocky butler and sometimes wrestler. He had had a Che Guevara Cafe that went bust. How ironic that this advocate of communism had been an entrepreneur. He was soft spoken and amiable.

There was Turar – the baby faced bodyguard. He was likable and quiet. He never pretended to be something he was not. I sensed a lack of self-assurance in him. He was very athletic and never did his ‘war face’ at me as some others had.

Tall Earl was another decent guy. He was affable and insouciant. He had served as a close protection bodyguard for the president. He had a very athletic mien. Tall Earl had no need to act hard because he was hard. There was no mistaking that.

Short Earl was about 40 and had a crew cut. He had huge cheek bones like a gerbil. He was the most Centrasian looking. Shaking his hand I felt that he was a man of solid sinew. He was not tall but he was as tough as old boots.

Arman was an older Centrasian – perhaps 50. He was not that tall but again a mere handshake indicated that he was nothing but muscle. Bright rated him as the hardest.

Universe was a driver. He was a Centrasian. He was simple minded and good natured. He had never been abroad. He was married with two children.

The staff were always co-operative and polite. I took care never to make any criticism of the family, explicit or implicit, to the staff. This is an informer society. To have bad mouthed the family would have meant I had really pissed on my chips.

Mike the chef was a decent chap. He was slender which seemed peculiar. I remember the proverb – never trust a skinny cook. He smoked and drank vodka. He was partly of Polish origin but was an Orthodox Christian. Quite a few unfortunate Poles had been banished to Kazakhstan slave labour camps as part of the USSR’s racist policies. Those who survived were released after 10 or more years. Their descendants were not allowed to leave until the 1990s. By that time most had intermarried with Russians. Misha was in his early 30s: his hair was dark grey and rather prominent teeth. Emperor told me that Mike was embarrassed about his teeth. I was astonished to learn that I was older than Mike. He was married to the very lubricious Lena and had three little sons. Perhaps that had turned him prematurely grey.

Stas was one of the most genuine and amiable people I met. He was thoughtful and full of liberality. He came from a southern district though was of Russian stock. He was 6’2” and well built. This horny handed son of toil was a chef. He was forever cooking me tasty dishes unbidden.

There were two nannies. Both were Central Asians and seemed to have been selected for their rotundity. For once Mrs. Golden showed a bit of nous. These women resembled spinning tops and if Mrs. Golden was anything to do by her husband cannot have found these females desirable. Sex between Mr. G and these women would have been impossible on account of two huge bellies being in the way.

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SOCIAL LIFE

It may seem like grueling solitude. I knew the family’s staff. They were decent to me but never socialised with me. I started going to my local. I chatted to the undersized heavy smoking barman. The porky Russian owner sat on a corner bar tool sullenly smoking. I also met a young woman there with a tattoo of a snake on her arm. She told me it was a symbol of wisdom. Not many people went to ‘Manhattan Bar’ as it was incongruously called. It was very overpriced for a dive on the edge of the city.

I had a Russian girlfriend named Olga on the go. I flew her over and spent 10 days with her. Then she went home for 10 days. I brought her out for another 10 days.

Being a very forward type at one Internations party I met Yuliya. Yuliya was a Russkaya. She was a kept woman. She had been an air hostess. Yuliya had a passably pretty face. She was stick thin. She later revealed that she ate fruit and nothing else. She was 38 but looked 10 years younger. I went around to her place once. She showed me her boudoir first thing. I got the wrong idea about her intentions! I did not make a move right away. She had had a Western boyfriend who had bought her the flat. She was a full-time nothing. At least Soul could pretend to care for her kids. This mercenary bitch was not even decent enough to call herself a strumpet which is what she was. I did not beg a liaison with her. I was later able to expose Yuliya for what she is. I wrote to her weeks later saying my American pal would like to meet her and would be generous. She jumped at the bait. How much I asked? She took umbrage at that. Her sulphorous texts said she could report me. She was a decent woman and was being propositioned. She reacted so angrily because I had reminded her of what she really was.

Later I started stepping out with a Centrasian 12 years my senior named Flower. She was fun and delightfully deranged. She was petite – too small in the boobs department. She had grown up in Black Town. Must have been hard for her in that multi ethnic city where some of her Russian classmates will have had ample chests. Flower had small dark eyes and was very lively and fun. Her black locks were surely dyed and they hung down almost to her elbows. She had a broad flattish nose and those prominent Central Asian cheekbones. She was a Kazakh through and through but did not speak the Kazakh language. Her parents had put her in a boarding nursery from the age of 6 months to the age of 7 years. She only went to them on weekends because they were busy in the week. Her father had two children from his second marriage and five from his first!

I went to some internations parties. I noticed a nubile girl I shall name Damsel hovering. She was 30 but looked 18.

There I met a very pretty young Centrasian named Damsel. I began a liaison with her. Damsel could not come to me every evening. She had no objection to me carrying on bonking Flower. So I did. I told Flower that Damsel was my girlfriend. Flower accepted it philosophically. She was pragmatic enough to recognise that she was not flooded with offers at her age. She still came around to be bonked when Damsel was not there. I was three timing the Russian. I was a conscientious fornicator indeed and an equal opportunities one. Anything between legality and menopause, well just after even. If only as a sex starved schoolboy I could have known this. I like to be as naughty as possible. At the age of 16 I had sworn to myself that I would never, ever miss a chance to have sex. I have lived by that avowal. I am a man of honour!

I took a shine to Damsel’s Latvian pal. The Latvian was married to an Italian. I stupidly kept asking Damsel about the leggy Latvian. Damsel stayed with the Latvian some nights. Have you seen her naked? What are her tits like? How large are they? Are they firm? Are they perky? My obsessions with the 24 year old Latvian’s cans became tiresome for Damsel who was not well endowed in that area.

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PREDECESSORS

They had sacked a predecessors a few months before. That man lasted only a month. He had bawled out Bright. If ever someone deserved this it was that wastrel. Moreover, that man admitted to the horror of horrors: being an atheist.

They also had had a black British tutor who spoke perfect Russian. He had been a lecturer at a local university and only acted as preceptor to these princelings part-time. Years before they had a female tutor.

They considered having a tutor worthwhile but hardly met them.

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RELIGION

Sometimes I would venture into the drawing room which doubled as a dining room. The place was spotless. The floor was all white marble. There were a few small rugs around. Almost everything was white or pale. A few blown up photos of the family, ancestors and ancestresses adorned the walls. About the only dark item in the room was a very large copy of the Koran in Arabic. No one could read Arabic. They read the book in Russian. The Koran was on a stand and it was very elevated on its lectern. This was because they reverenced not just the verbal content but the paper and ink. It begs the rational question – at what point does the text become the Koran? One word from the Koran? That can be used in all sorts of non-Koranic contexts. Two words from it together? Three words from it strung together? Or what? Religion is so often the sworn enemy of free inquiry. But I suppose I am committing a logical fallacy. It is the paradox of the beard or of the continuum.

I came to learn more and more about this clan. I was often treated to their worldview. They held Putin in high regard. They also exalted their president. It tickled me to praise him to the moon. I knew it would be have been the end of my job if I had done anything else. Their education was about deadening the critical faculties. It is notorious that faith terrorises the intellect and is inimical to academic freedom. Some questions must never be asked and some conclusions must never be reached no matter how absolutely positive the proof.

The nomads detested any Ukrainian who did not want his country turned into a satrapy of Moscow. Emperor said the Mayor of Kiev was stupid. I was to hear this oftentimes. One’s enemies are not bad, misguided, insane, or anything: they are stupid. It was odd. I would often castigate my enemies in worse terms but they are seldom stupid. They are often devilishly clever. But that is the standard Soviet insult ‘stupid’ even when the person so labelled is demonstrably clever.

The family was also Sunni Muslim. Like almost everyone of their ethnicity their religion had been dormant in the mid-20th century. Since the fall of communism they had gradually returned to their faith. Mr. Golden had been your typical Turcoman – drinking and smoking whilst never venturing near a mosque and having no idea what the Koran said. In his mid-30s he had found Allah. He had renounced alcohol. He still smoked a shisha. He went to Mecca in the company of prez. His religion underlines the equality of all people (Except women. And Shia. And slaves. And Jews. And blasphemers. And apostates. And Ukrainians. And gays. And, and, and…). In line with the egalitarian ethic of this religion only the super affluent are allowed into the holy of holies. I suppose that his faith increased his sophism. He had done much to merit nine and ninety virgins. It was strange that Mr. G sucked on a shisha and claimed to like the idea of a sharia state. In Pakistan they are outlawed.

Emperor told me how Shia are hell hounds. How could I disagree? He expressed stalwart support for Dr. Bashir Al Assad. This was chiefly because the Butcher of Syria was a bosom buddy of V. V. Putin. Emperor voiced his detestation of daesh who were not Muslims at all he told me. His opinions on Syria were very fully formed and absolute. I could not resist bursting his bubble. Then I pointed out to him that Assad was Shia. His precepts were: ”Assad is good. Shia are evil. Assad is a Shia.” Try that for a failed syllogism. How are you going to lawyer your way out of that, Emperor? It was my introduction to a new philosophical concept: a conundrum. But I was not over. I just had to piss on his parade. His credo was: ”Sunni are morally upstanding. Shia are wicked. Daesh are wicked.” Then I brought to his attention the inconvenient fact that Daesh are Sunni to the point that they revile the Shia as he did. That messed him up! Talk about a mind fuck. How are you going to lawyer your way out of that one? His face was a picture of sullen discombobulation. Most Sunnis are anti Assad or indeed pro-Daesh. Dr. Al Assad’s forces are mostly Shia or Christian or indeed Druze. Druze being schismatics from Sunnism which is considered even worse than Shiaism by most Sunnis. If this boy really believed in Sunni solidarity he should throw in his lot with… It was an object lesson in conditioning. People can very firmly believe in something without knowing the most elementary facts about it. This boy did not have the talent for sophism to make even a superficially plausible argument for his position. Indubitable fact had collided with unmovable prejudice. He was not artful enough in casuistry to attempt to explain away the manifold contradictions in his worldview.

Emperor learnt the words in the language to say ”In God’s name”. If someone of the faith prefaced a statement this was swearing that he spoke the truth. This was hilarious! He was shamelessly dishonest. This wuss would often bunk off school pretending to be ill. When I told him he was not really ill he would say that he was and then rub his nose vigorously – a surefire sign of lying. He would give other tells of mendacity such as blinking. The Book commands its believers to tell the truth even if these means bearing witness against themselves. Yet he continually handed in work he had not done. He had a very underdeveloped conscience – just like his old man. If he really believed the boy would have got up at the first chink of daylight to pray. But oh no he would talk the talk but never walk the walk. Faith was all about posturing and self – congratulation. The minute it required him to make a tiny sacrifice somehow the faith did not count. As for me I put my money where my mouth was. When I believed I heard mass daily in Lent – going well beyond my obligations.

I strove not to judge emperor at least not too harshly. He was ductile. It was hard not to be haughty when you are stinking rich and constantly told that you are a cut above the rest. At his age I too had a lot of bullshit beliefs. I had undergone a schooling which seemed to be intended to make one as cocksure as possible. Self-assurance comes across as arrogance to others. His political views were risible but mine too have sometimes been misguided.

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ACHIEVING SOMETHING?

My duties were very easy. I had plenty of time for study and creative writing. I was to later explore the city on foot and bicycle.

I tried to make each child learn at least 10 words a time. They had a vocabulary book. They would answer simple retrieval questions on comprehension exercises. Anything beyond factual recall was beyond them. They bunked off about a quarter of the days of school. These slovenly fools just lounged around the house in the morning and made a miraculous recovery in the arvo. They went on Umrah as well. This is a praiseworthy thing to do. To say nothing of its spiritual grace it is at very least an education. Listening to all those preachments they will have saved up much treasure in seventh heaven. Their faith is entirely altruistic!

Sometimes the boys would bunk of school claiming to be indisposed: of which more later. There will be a lot more about that later! Once Emperor came out to greet me with a surgical mask on saying he was staying at home owing to his being under the weather. They were so precious and feeble. Was the house not salubrious?

Their education was going nowhere fast – not that I gave a damn. They did not care a jot for their schooling so why should I? They do not need education. The parents plainly do not value it. I have worried about my own exams so I will be damned if I worry about someone else’s.

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HAL

I was later to meet more member of the clan. Uncle Hal is the most notable. I dub him Hal in recognition of his misspent youth which at the age of 30 showed no sign of being over. His dissipation made him more likable than his God bothering and nauseatingly hypocritical brother. But this poltroon Hal was a pathetic excuse for a person.

Hal was a sot. It was a shock to discover that he was a diplomat. Send forth the best ye breed!  An alcoholic, chain smoking, academically subnormal, idle, adulterer is probably not the ideal diplomat. This scion of an ignoble house was as undiplomatic as it was possible to be. Hal was short and weedy but at least unlike his eldest brother he was not a fatty boom boom. Hal was also a braggart. He told me in his fractured English that he had been to Cambridge University. It was a lie so blatant as to be risible. Methought this meant he attended a course at a language school there. I will say this for Hal. He did not pretend to have any religious proclivities. Mr. Golden was always holier than thou and judgmental. Hal was delightfully free of any of these prejudices. Say what you like about Hal (unjustifiably prideful, wife beating, sybaritic, immature, unlearned, languid, drug addled, adulterous, monoglot and wastrel for example) but he was not a hypocrite.  I had a modicum of respect for Hal in that in this sense he was true to himself.

Hal was an outright hedonist. Golden’s crimes were made all the more nauseating by his much vaunted piety. The boys told me candidly of blazing rows at family dinners. Grandfather would give Hal a tongue lashing. They were at the end of their tether with his heavy drinking. He was matey with the chef. He would send a driver to pick up his neglected wife and children from the airport. Hal would go and get the chef himself. They were drinking buddies. Hal watched footer and slept in the staff house. He sometimes puked from overdrinking. His nephews were aware of his debauchery and even came along to see his vomit on the floor. They found his alcohol in the fridge. There were ructions in the clan. Golden would berate Hal for his dipsomania. I wonder if he ever got drunk as a skunk at work.

In time I would reside in a staff house in Doha. Half the time Hal was there of an evening. He would be sipping beer and downing vodka. He would be there with the chef watching English football and screaming Russian obscenities at the screen (”sooka!) when his team messed up. Sooka meaning ‘bitch’ but it is a general intensifier. Immature onanist though he was I must hand it to Hal: he was genuine. Though he was apolaustic the man did not overindulge in style. He might as well have been a brickie.

A little bird told me that Hal grabbed his wife by the hair in front of the whole family. Even his 8 year old nephew saw this. In full view of his relatives he dragged his wife across the room. If this is what this pathetic little coward was willing to do in the immediate presence of his kinsfolk what would he do behind closed doors? It would not surprise me if he was a wife beater. My disdain for him plumbed new depths.

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ANOTHER BROTHER

I later met Murad who was another brother of Mr. Golden. Murad was average height and much more than average girth. He was not as lardy as his eldest brother. Murad must have been a clever lad since he was in the secret service. Only bright people get into the secret service. The secret service in Soviet countries is the deep state. So many presidents are former spooks. Their cronies are also spooks. Murad spoke the best English of the lot of them despite having studied German at university. He was stooped and shuffled about wheezily. His gait and bearing were redolent of his eldest bro. It was also partially explicable by smoking as well as unusual slothfulness. He was younger than me but appeared to be 10 years older.

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THE DAUGHTER

I began to have my doubts about the sprog Zhumagul. This infant was born about 5 months before I landed there. The putative father was grossly overweight. He did not more exercise than walk from his front door down five steps to his car. Was such a man capable of granting his wife her conjugal rights? Even with a packet of blue pills it cannot have been easy. Pfizer must be doing well. Did Mrs. Golden really want him for his body? Admittedly when they wed he was in his early 20s and may not have resembled a Tatar John Prescott back then. Golden can surely no longer rise to the occasion even with a fistful of blue pills. I console myself with the thought that Golden and Soul will no longer pollute the Earth with more of their accursed spawn.

The Filipina told me that Mr. G had a mistress in Romania who was pulchritudinous. He was always flying to Romania ostensibly for business. The ulterior reason was to give his maitresse en titre a good seeing to.  Mrs. G. would then fly after him in an attempt to catch him. This was just servant’s gossip. I called to mind Fr. Chad’s dictum – listen to gossip but do not add to it. But what could Mrs. G do? Did she even want to dissolve her marriage? Courts in Kazakhstan were totally on the side of men. Besides he could bribe more than she could. She was living the life or Reilly – that of idle luxury. Why would she want her husband around more? If he was fucking a Romanian ho at least Mrs. G did not have to find herself being mounted by a man who resembled an ugly edition of an elephant seal.

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DOHA

I had been in the job a couple of months. Out of the blue I was told we were flying to Doha. They had property there. I was elated to go and see the radio rentals. I had spent some of my formative years in Qatar.

This being flown to people at no notice at all was par for the course with them. Information was not given on a need to know basis. In fact need to know information was not given – that is more accurate.

I was accommodated in a fantastic hotel. My work was as undemanding as usual.

The Golden’s had a few properties there. Qatari law was wonderfully lax. They did not need to know who the real owner was nor how the money to buy a place was acquired. They had registered their place in the name of a flunky. Later they re-registered it in the name of a trust. So often a trust is a cause for distrust. Money talks and yet silences.

Back to Centrasia. A couple of months later there was another unanticipated visit to Doha. This time there was a method to the madness. The objective was to prepare the boys for school admission tests. They showed up late if at all. The little chap made a satisfactory effort. The older pair wrote the bare minimum. The eldest fellow was so bone idle he would not put a full stop or dot an ‘i’. I told him myriad times to do so. His lassitude was scandalous. I cannot put all the blame on their shoulders. I did not care a fig for their education. As they each had tens of millions of dollars in patrimony they did not need a job ever. They would be got jobs because their kin were men of consequence. Moreover, barring the little chap they did not deserve education.  They went into these tests unwilling, unready and unable. With a minimum of effort on their part and mine it was unsurprising that they failed. They all told me they did not wish to shift to this country. Can their dismal results have been purposive?

It was on these visits to Doha that I met their Centralian teacher. She was a middle age woman of middle age. She taught them Russian and their ancestral tongue. She vouchsafed that Emperor was not bad at this indigenous language. Bright spoke it terribly. Milk knew a little.

Emperor was later to claim to know Italian and Hungarian. I tried a few pleasantries on him and he was flummoxed. He had been deceiving me which came as no surprise.

I was hired partly as a mentor for these boys. I was a good role model. I was neither obese nor weedy. I did not abuse substances. I always studied and achieved things.

====================

NEIGHBOURS

I got on well with Aysel though she was a diffident and unsmiling sort. Her husband was the bearlike Darkhan who was kindly. It was odd that she underlined the fact that I was not to smoke in the place. Her hubby was often popping out for a fag in the small hours.  Despite his huge size he struck me as lacking self-assurance. He was fat rather than strong His tiny eyes blinked bashfully. He worked at a car park. I never learnt the name of his older brother who popped in from time to time. The older brother was much smaller and an unfriendly sort. There were two little girls and a baby boy. I never figured out which child belong to which couple. There was Aktote who was married to the smaller (but older) brother. The older bro was much shorter and curmudgeonly sort. Aktote was very tall for one of her race. She looked like Olive Oil. Apparently her Russian was ungrammatical. I cannot judge these things.

Aysel’s bro came along sometimes and he was genial. Nurlan even invited me to go shooting. In the end I was not there next time they went off to do so.

I went to the corner shops in the car park or on the street around the corner. They all got to know me.

A middle aged ethnic Russian woman worked in the one nearest to us. This plain faced and full bodied dark haired female was pleasant enough. After a few months she said that she had heard of my occupation. In the summer holidays her little daughter came and assisted her in the shop.

There was a language school in my building. I considered offering my services part time. But no I needed to concentrate on my studies. It amused me to hear their lessons through open windows in the summer. There were a few such language institutes along the main boulevard hard by.

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RETREAT

The eldest too took religious instruction from an imam. Their father had only got religion a couple of years before. This indoctrination came at a very impressionable age for them. Miseducation seemed to have worked. Emperor had some critical faculties but the holy man had managed to blunt these. Bright was not the sharpest knife in the drawer. In fact he was the bluntest. Therefore he took it all as Gospel – don’t forgive the pun.

In June it was decided that we should go on a religious retreat. One Friday I was picked up by Glory. He drove me to the mosque near the airport. There I spoke casually to him and Lanky. Glory spoke not a word of English. He was a melancholic sort. I remarked how the winter had almost proved fatal for me. Suddenly Glory was in gales of laughter. My mildest witticism had elicited this?

The boys were in the airport mosque. The sermon in Centrasian was broadcast over the public address system. There were hundreds of cars parked there. Finally they came out. We drove a little way and all met.

Nine boys were going on the retreat with the imam. I met a few of the fathers. One was a bearded man which was a very noticeable mark of piety. Beards are very rare indeed in this land. Being Mongoloids these men have almost no facial hair. I met another wild faced young man who was short but had enormous biceps. These people really adulate weight lifters and the like. Yes, that is the real proof of morality – facial hair. Not honesty, hair.

The imam had a goatee and could evidently not cultivate a bushy beard. He gave them a stirring pep talk in Russian. The idea was to behave as good Muslims and practise their ancestral tongue. Into the van. There were a few other cars going. The imam was a truly good man. He made a living by sucking up to the wealthiest thieves and salving their consciences.

The imam drove his own banger. His wife was in it. I saw her through the window. She wore a plain blue denim dress. It was as big as a tent and totally shapeless. If she wanted to kill desire stone dead she succeeded. They also had their little son with them.

We drove out of the city. Boundless prairie was on both sides of the road. The land barely undulated. The limitless land luxuriated in lushness. No streams flowed amid the green pastures that tapered away to the broad horizon. The grassland was solitary and level – stretching in every direction. The green of the meadows shaded into the shimmering cerulean sky. Soon we saw neighing herds of wild horses. They quadrupeds had been life to the peoples of these plains for millennia. These Centralians had been nomads till a century before. Their itinerant lifestyle was supported by horse meat and mares’ milk. I got some notion of the scale of the country.

When we stopped half way I noticed the imam’s wife did not get out. When we finally reached the hotel she did not greet us or even look at us. I knew enough about Dar al Islam to take her lead. I never spoke to her or even sought eye contact. She wanted to be the ideal of Muslim womanhood.  There was no way on earth anyone could call her a coquette.

At last the featureless grasslands gave way to a few low hills and clumps of pine trees. The straight road began to snake and bend. The road sloped upwards and the pine wood groves became larger and more frequent. Then it was more woodland and less steppe. We saw little lakes here and there. Stony hills rose near us.

We were in the Switzerland of the country. It was a bucolic idyll. The air was cool and refreshing. A placid and unspoiled lake was beside the road.

We pulled up at a wooden hotel. It nestled in a dense pine forest It would have been a Swiss chalet. To our rooms we went. The uneven land sloped down to the lake. There were several little holiday dachas around. People were having barbeques.

I had a spacious carpeted en suite room. From the window I had a view over the coniferous forest and down to the blue lake beyond.

On that first sunny evening the imam, guard and I had a meeting in the dining room. The guard was Tall Earl. The imam and Earl spoke Centrasian so I was unable to follow. They later translated into Russian for my sake.

The two teenagers who were the friends of my pupils were the most disreputable ones there. These two were particularly pompous and cocky even by the standards of their class. They were two of five brothers. They seemed to believe boys were superior. How did boys come into the world? Perhaps girls were involved somewhere along the line.

There was bullying going on and I did not intervene. It was not my place. I had no authority and my Russian was not up to it. Courage is always a mistake. When I taught in schools and intervened to defend the weak it was always turned on me. I was the bad one and had been too hard on the bully. The imam was in charge. Of course he did not stick up for the victims. No doubt that would have been un-Islamic.

I swam in the crystalline lake. It was very chilly indeed. I could not swim for long there.

There was a tent down by the shore. There was a rubber floor in it for wrestling. I was to do lessons with the boys. My two dolts arrived late and left early. I was not at all disciplinarian. I knew that if I tried to lay down the law I would be sacked. I handed out some reading exercises in Russian and English. I had the boys volunteer to look at the English text and do simultaneous translation. Emperor could translate Russian into Centralian. There were some comprehension questions to do orally. Bright lounged about and played with his phone. When it went off I courteously requested that he left the tent. Using a phone is fine but they must do so outside. Some of the boys were endowed with reasonable linguistic ability but others spoke almost no English. Almost nothing was gained.

I used the internet to surf filth. I was using a boy’s code to access it. Later internet access stopped. I asked the boy about it. He said it had been closed and there was a certain look on his face. I read there that he too had been looking at biological drama on it and the management had cut the feed for that reason. So much for the religious retreat.

I was friendly with the very diminutive sports coach. Despite his lack of height he had bulging muscles. He drove me into town. I conversed with him happily. We took luncheon with his friends in their holiday chalets. I wandered around the small lakeside resort town. I met some Azerbaijanis working there. They were bowled over to meet someone from Ireland who had lived in their country.

We twice played basketball in the nearby sports centre. There were no rules. People ran with the ball. This totally defeated the notion of basketball.  Possession could only be obtained by grabbing the ball or player. Basketball precludes contact. This put the beefiest boys at a big advantage. Some lads were 16 and some were 8. It was irrational and totally unfair. It was typical of my two to be total cheats. I pushed one over but he did not complain. That was out of character for him.  Emperor drove the four wheel drive on the road. The driver was in a bind. If he let the boy drive and the boy crashed then the driver was for the high jump. If he refused to let him drive then the boy could accuse him of anything and get him sacked. Poor old universe. In the end nothing untoward occurred.

At a meadow near this place a Mongol emperor had once held a council of war. He is honoured with a memorial there. This is perhaps the only country outside of China where a man who commanded genocide is held up as heroic. Is this skull piling despot really a role model for a modern president? He sees himself as a modern warlord. He is more of a Genghis Can’t than Genghis Khan.

I chatted to the old timer of an accountant in the computer room.  This Muscovite grandmother was good looking for a woman her age. It was bizarre to describe Ireland to her as I sat amid the endless forests of Siberia.

The boys has religious instruction. They also prayed five times daily. My shower prayed once a day at home. Apart from that they were too busy doing nothing at home. On the retreat Earl and driver Universe also took part in the prayer sessions. They were not that virtuous since they smoked.

The imam was a very moral man – ministering only the spiritual needs of the super-rich. My pupils later told me of Gog and Magog trapped in the mountain. They scraped away at the walls but could never escape. You know why? Every time azan (prayer call) sounds the stone thickens. It was a very enlightening week for them. Being made to believe stupid lies is so educative and morally uplifting.

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CENTRASIA.

You may get the impression that I disliked Centrasia and I am prejudiced against the people of that nation. Don’t get me wrong. I like the country and would happily return. There are some marvellous Centrasians. Plenty of them are decent. It is only a small number who are rates. Sadly rats tend to get to the top. Or is it getting to the top makes them rats?

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SUMMER TIME

I came back from the Antilles. I flew to Turkey. I was not told who would meet me. It was Lanky. He drove me to the hotel. It was a lovely spot full of villas. Soon I had lessons at their house in the adjoining hotel.

Ramadan was on. All but the little fellow observed it. They told me how their father was pious and their mother was gradually becoming more passionate about her faith. The man was ardently religious and the woman was not. Could it be that the faith offered more to one sex than the other?

They went to the mosque for namaaz. One of the bodyguards would accompany them. Both guards were Muslim. Milk asked that his favourite bodyguard sleep in the house in case he wanted him at night. It was as though the child had a deeper bond with this man than his father. Turar was a decent avuncular figure. He set an example of exercise and of abstaining from gluttony. Milk’s father was away more often than no. When Golden was bad he simply vegetated on the sofa. He rarely did anything with them. He was an elective invalid.

Turar did not just have brute strength. He was also skillful: he had to be flexible and have a keen eye. He had a degree too.

Occasionally I was invited to their wooden jetty to swim with them.

The oldest chap had his own boat. I went on it and their jet skis. My duties were undemanding as ever. Perhaps I should have visited cotton castle.

It was boiling outside. I swam diurnally. I feasted on the plentiful provender dished up at my all-inclusive hotel.

I very seldom met the father. I never had a substantial conversation with him. I knew a lot anecdotally. He was decent to his staff and tipped them. It was Mrs. Golden who was grasping and mean spirited. She was not even a housewife. Her sense of entitlement was shocking. Her miserliness towards her exploited staff was truly horrific.

I heard many ghastly vignettes but they are uncorroborated. Therefore I cannot lend them full credence.

It was in July that the news came through of their applications to schools in Qatar. They had all been rejected by all of them. It came as a slight surprise. I feared they may be irate and blame me. Oddly they did not do so. I was told for certain that we would not be moving to Araby.

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CHARACTERS:

The personalities of the family had fully emerged after a few months.

EMPEROR

Emperor was willful and full of himself. He had deep affection for his parents. His filial respect was notable. There was none of the rebelliousness that Western teenagers feel towards their parents. He was deeply influenced by his imam. He told me when he wed he would require his wife to wear a hijab. His mother never sported one. He even had the cheek to tell her not to wear shorts. To give Mr. G his due he said that his wife could wear shorts. The boy was very categorical. He wanted hardline Islamic mores to be observed. I asked him if he warmed to the idea of a Shariat state. He did but said it was impractical in a land with a large Christian majority. I was wiser than to ask what would happen to his uncle Hal in such a state since than was reprobate. His dypsomania was known to the boys. Emperor had an infidel girlfriend. He would not able to meet her in a Shariat state. He wanted to attend a mixed school. In Saudi Arabia Muslim schools are single sex. He had a paranoid detestation of homosexuals. When I had the boy read my precis of Ataturk’s deeds he deprecated Ataurk for secularising Turkey.

The boy had a passion for self-laudation. He told me he spoke Italian. I really do. Asking him to count to five soon put paid to that boast. Even reading English he stumbled over the syllables and writing it he slaughtered the syntax.

His braggadocio was one of his more unattractive character traits. Why this grandiosity? It had been inculcated into him by his parents. I too was stuck up at his age on account of my schooling. I did at least try to achieve something through writing and study.  He was shiftless but seemed to think he was a major achiever.  He claimed that his family did much for charity. I was sager than to remind him that all their lucre was stolen from the people anyway. His delight in the death penalty indicated inadequacy.

He was a vociferous supporter of the president. Bizarrely he decried Turkmenbashi as a wicked dictator. I thought this was ironic since Turkmenbashi and Karimov are so similar that one could be an alias for the other.

Emperor wanted to be hard but had a weedy frame. What a cruel trick of nature. The family adulated muscle men. He could not be an athlete when he was so languorous. This must have caused him distress – his failure to measure up to the family’s goals of being tough. But they all failed abysmally there.

I told Emperor how his family was very exalted and managed to say it with a straight face. Exalted for what? Greed? Theft? Vulgarity? Indolence? Underachievement? Boasting? Time Pleasing? Babyishness? Who would adulate these freebooters?

The cadaverous youth was occasionally considerate. I will give him some credit for expressing compassion. He was a little broadminded. He said had he been brought up elsewhere he would have different opinions. Getting work out of him was like squeezing blood out of a stone. He had abilities but squandered them. He only ever wrote anything with the greatest reluctance. Soon he was having me do his homework for him. It was as though he considered doing his own work infra dignitate. I knew his English teacher socially. On one occasion I thought it would be a good jape to write Emperor’s essay for him but using such high falutin’ vocabulary that it would be blatant that he had not composed it himself. Emperor had not grasped the rudiments of grammar. Therefore it was blindingly obvious within half a sentence that this boy had not written a word of this essay himself. The teacher had a sense of humour failure. On other occasions I was subtler. I would write at his level and deliberately insert grammatical disagreements. I used his American colloquialisms in essays to mirror his inability to distinguish between street slang and academic English.

This youngster went for wrestling coaching sessions despite his scrawny frame. He showed me a video of him wrestling and losing. I assumed he was showing me one of his more creditable performances. It was unfair on him that such expectations were placed on his slender shoulders. He was little more than skeletal. He was trying to live up to his father’s contemptible and puerile fantasies of martial prowess. He was arrogant. If he had actually achieved anything then he could have had a better conceit of himself.

It amused me to tell Emperor what he wanted to hear. I said that Mr. President was the most fabulous one in the world. I could barely suppress my chortles. It astonished me when he said that the president of a neighbouring country was reviled. The president of the next door nation was very similar. Was he too purblind to see this? I also told the boy that his father was highly respected.

I had him read some recondite redactions at first. But they were heavy weather for him. Thereafter I wrote more condign texts for this teenager. His innate ability was average and not high as he imagined. He was so mollycoddled and overpraised. He was a laggard and refused to write. It did not matter and iota to me so I let him not write.

Emperor was a Second World War buff. He was very conscious of the countless horrific crimes committed by the Wehrmacht in the Soviet Union. He gave me chapter and verse on these numerous atrocities. He then told me that when the Red Army reached Germany, ”They did nothing.” As in he was claiming no Soviet soldier ever sought revenge for the rape of his daughter or the murder of his mother. Are you having a fucking laugh? As any other army would have done in a similar situation the Red Army looted, raped and murdered in Germany. It is hard to judge them harshly for such crimes. They had seen mountains of corpses. They were so enraged by the numberless massacres committed against their people that they were driven mad by bloodlust. Who can blame them? What they did was immoral but only an angel could have resisted such urges.

When the boy grew exercised about a topic he would look down and knit his brow. Spittle would gather at the corners of his mouth.

Emperor believed in Sunni solidarity. He also denounced Daesh and admired Assad for crushing these fiends. Belabouring the civilians of Syria – no Assad’s minions had never hurt a fly. Emperor detested the Shia ”dogs from hell”. Then I discomfited him by informing him that Dr Al Assad is a Shia. Birds of a feather must stick together? Does that mean fighting Assad and backing Daesh? Does not compute. He had vociferous opinions on a subject about which he knew sweet F A.

The eldest often quoted his grandfather as a never failing source of truth and sagacity. After dinner the grandfather would treat the family to a disquisition. As he held forth they would listen with rapt attention to his rants. 9/11 was an inside job. Osama Bin Laden was not behind the World Trade Center attacks. Obama was a puppet of the Jews. Gaddafi had been a good man. Putin was magnificent. Emperor would sometimes give me the benefit of his views on things. ‘The world according to Emperor’ was very entertaining indeed. He told me Shiaism was irreligion. He did at least have the perspective to admit that in Russia there was a lot of anti-Muslim prejudice. Otherwise his loyalty to Russia was doglike. He had to somehow harmonise a reflex approval for Russian policy with solidarity for the Umma. Square that circle! He had a great capacity for doublethink. He was in a state of denial about things. The boy had had irrationality dinned into him as though it was the acme of all virtues.

Like most cruel, feeble, pathetic and spiteful people he favoured the death penalty. He was over the moon when his president restored it. Why take such a retrograde step? It was because the economy tanked. To divert attention from his shortcomings the thief-in-chief decided to fan hatred of the unpopular. Capital punishment was to be restored for paedophiles. I do not approve of the death penalty generally. When it is imposed for a crime less than murder it is barbaric. I asked this moron what the age of consent was in his land. He said 18. Not sure if he was right. That is high as jurisdictions go. What would be the moral difference between copulation with an 18 year old and a 17 year old? One cannot draw a hard and fast distinction between a man who does it with an 18 year old and a 16 year old. I was too circumspect to remind him what age his mother was when she wed. She was under 18. This cretin was so malicious that he was unwittingly calling for the death of his father. Did holy men of his faith really wait till a girl was 16 before marrying her? Remind me how old Ayesha was when the Prophet Mohammed married her? Peace and Blessings upon Him! He was also an ardent fan of the death penalty for drug mules. His faith teaches him compassion and mercy.

Emperor sometimes voiced admiration for Usama Bin Laden. Yet he denied that the sheikh was behind the atrocities in 2011. So why adulate this man? He is not renowned for his exegetical work. Emperor was adept at denial. He could both believe and disbelieve in the same notion at the same time. He honoured this man for that crime against humanity whilst also believing that this man was in no wise connected to that crime. It was a sort of a Schrodinger’s Bomb paradigm if you will.

I would question some of the boy’s outlandish notions. No one doubted that Al Qa’eda was behind the 1993 World Trade Center bomb. Why was it so hard to believe they attacked it in 2001? The 9/11 attacks severely damaged the US economy and made Bush look grossly incompetent. Why would he do that? The Iraq and Afghan Wars that flowed from 9/11 had hardly been rip roaring successes for the United States. Why would Osama release all those videos bragging that he authorised such attacks if he did not authorise them? Where is the evidence that he was paid by Washington to do so? He then had to live as a fugitive. Osama hardly lived in luxury – look at where he lived in Abbotabad in the end? Why would the US kill him if he was so useful? The thesis that the US Government was behind these crimes was preposterous. It was difficult to argue with someone as illogical as him. The boy was an unhinged conspiracy theorist with the best of them. It was his imam who had led him up this blind alley.  He grew up in a semi totalitarian society. Thinking for oneself was very much discouraged. Dissent was perilous. I must see his daft beliefs in this light. I was lucky enough to grow up in an open society. I must not be insensitive to that fact that he was being forcefed nonsense. He strove to avoid the inescapable conclusion about 9/11.

Emperor also believed whatever his religious instructor told him. Growing a beard was good. Yes, morality consists of facial follicles. It is not about refraining from theft or anything. How richly ironic that at the age of 17 he had no facial hair. Perhaps this caused him low self-esteem or an emotional disturbance. At the same time he was complacent. The book is obviously rooted in a certain locale since men in Central Asia have hardly any facial hair. Have they been created wicked?

I saw something of myself in him. I had been similar at about that age. I was torn between religiosity and my libidinousness. It was funny that he wanted a Sharia state and did not wanted to go to an all boys’ school. He was frightened that there would be gays at a single sex school. They might homosexualise him? If there was a Sharia state then the genders are segregated. Logic and thinking things through were not his fortes.

This youth had very high ethical standards. As in he refused to eat pork though curiously telling porkie pies was permissible. Cheating is totally acceptable of course. Morality is dietary and not about how one treats others.

Emperor was so pampered as to be clueless. He imagined that bribery and favouritism existed all over. Perhaps he cannot be blamed for this. He could not get his head around the fact that Prince Harry was given bad grades. Fairness and integrity were totally alien concepts to him. Emperor was hilarious without intending to be. He asked he if could go to Oxford! I should have told him that if he made a massive yes he could go to Oxford: as a cleaner. He dedicated tutorial time to asking questions about things that were impossible to achieve and never to achieving something. Never has so much help helped so little. The notion that he actually had to work to accomplish something was Hebrew to him. He was going to be a freeloader all his life.

Then he developed a strange obsession with Syonyanto. The work ethic and discipline of that city did not faze him. He blocked out unattractive facts. As for discipline – if he was ever reprimanded he reacted like a spoiled toddler. He would not delay gratification and used cognitive distortion to claim that unwelcome information was false or came from a hostile source. Many people take that attitude. He had not been taught to cope with ambiguity or to accept that a countervailing viewpoint might have some validity. He was never agnostic on any issue. He was very categorical. This delinquent was not entirely responsible for this. He may have inherited bad genes. There was also stress and instability in the family. Moreover, he had been brainwashed with the notion that gullibility is to be exalted and reason denigrated.

This misguided boy spoke of going to West Point. Imagine him as part of a cadre of cadets! He was the most unmanly boy around. He had no decorum. He had a foible of yawning and never putting his hand across his gob. He had the table manners that would disgrace a cannibal: He ate with his mouth wide open. When exercised, phlegm gathered at the corners of his mouth. But he thought he came out of the top drawer. He wanted to go to Eton because that is the top status school. Yes, he was well got by Central Asian standards which means his grandfathers tortured slaves for Stalin. Very respectable! In fairness, many nobles in Europe are descended from people who acquired their wealth and titles through equally barbaric means.

Emperor’s work was always jejune and slipshod. There was not enough of it. He could not write as well as his bro who was 7 years younger than him. He was always inattentive in school. He was weary much of the time. It made me wonder if he had glandular fever or something.  Such work as he handed in was always dilatory.  As he become more lethargic so his voice grew duller.

Emperor was a malcontent. He had more wealth than most people ever earn in a lifetime. Yes, he was an ingrate about this. He would only rail bitterly if he felt he was slighted. This could be things like a teacher criticising him. He wanted to go to the cinema. As usual he was late for the bus. He wanted a bus load of people to wait for him. Just one minute? He should have been just one minute earlier. He was so selfish that he often delayed the school bus just to underline his own importance. He had been told not to follow that bus to the cinema. He told his driver to take him anyway. He driver did. Emperor then tried to join the others in the cinema. The teacher told him not to. Emperor swore at the teacher and claimed that the man shoved him. Emperor later withdrew this allegation but did not deny having used an expletive at the man. Emperor ought to have been expelled. His mother was outraged that the teacher had put the interests of 20 other people before Emperor’s laziness and disorganisation. She said she would go into scream at the man. Then she, er, didn’t. She seemed to recognise that her son was in the wrong.

Emperor once lamented that his teacher had called him ”a stupid idiot.” If the man had done so it would have been a totally accurate statement except for its undue mildness. The 16 year old was almost crying when he said this. What a victim he was.

He was living in a very hierarchical society. The thing about such societies (like an army) is that people are obsequious to the higher ups. They are also vile to the lower downs.

Unsurprisingly someone this stuck up and selfish had few friends. He had no hobbies to socialise over. He brought two pals to Turkey. These boys came from a family of five brothers. It was as though they considered boys better than girls. How did they expect boys could be born? These two were especially arrogant and indolent.

Emperor was chronically idle. Like his parents he refused to face facts. Most people try to screen out unwelcome information. It is a tendency I have noticed in myself. I try not to do it. But Emperor was particularly terrible at this. Like his parents he used avoidance tactics. He would do anything to avoid dealing with the issue. He was blameworthy for not doing his work. He seldom lifted a finger but it was always someone else’s fault that his grades were dreadful. He was horrendously irresponsible: a chip off the old block. In a fair society he would end up as a car park attendant. This is a fine job for the idle and unambitious.

Emperor ‘s mind had been toxified by his religious teacher. This ‘education’ had succeeded in turning the boy against the values of the Enlightenment.  The brain washing had him believing in demons trapped in cave. These ghouls tried to scratch their way out. But each time the call to prayer sounded the stone grew back. He was so brainwashed he told his mother not to wear shorts. To give him his due Mr. G told the boy not to be so cheeky. Emperor told me he was insist that his wife wore headgear.

Emperor cared a little for his appearance. It was droll when he started losing his hair due to stress. That gave me some levity. I have more full hair on my head as I push 40 than this boy did at 15.

There was little parental monitoring of Emperor. He became aggressive towards the end. He was irate when I pointed out that he was not ill but malingering. He used very slight illnesses to bunk of school. He twice admitted that I was right when I put this to him in a non-confrontational manner. He then decided he was mortally offended because I had told the truth. His slobbing around at home was due to neglectful parents. See the example they set him. They were woeful role models.

I saw a poster which quoted Thomas Edison. He said his ingredients for success were commonsense and stick to it-iveness. This was the polar opposite of Emperor. He was flighty and weak willed as it is possible to be.

Emperor had grown more apathetic. He was passive in lessons. He had goals but was not goal oriented in his efforts. Effort may be too strong a word. He seemed indifferent to getting to Syonyanto. He said he wanted to go but action speaks louder than words. His extreme lethargy was galling.

I told him a lot about Lee Kuan Yew. The work ethic was something that Emperor paid lip service to.

Emperor believed in a certain ancient text. He took its glibbest statements to be the most marvelous profundities. Occasionally reading this book could vitiate all his sins. What he really exalts is hard cash.

The boy is a chip off the old block. He will no doubt carrying on claiming credit (and money) for work that others do. He shall surely have the same insistence on craven sycophancy.

====================

BRIGHT

Bright was the most detestable of the boys. He told me when he was 9 there were Turks at his school. ”They think they are like kings.” He hit a Turkish boy for being stuck up. That was rich coming from one of the most unwarrantably proud boys I have ever known. The school moved to boot him out. His grandmother was friends with the headmistress. She phoned up and told the woman not to expel Bright. Bright was allowed to stay. Then he took a violent dislike to another Turkish child and he hit him too. One five occasions Bright was almost kicked out. Each time his granny had the school keep him in. What about child protection? The others were suffering violence because of this despicable thug. He told me his parents did nothing about it. I do not doubt him on this issue. If on the other hand the parents felt their dim witted slighted they would have reacted with fury.

When in Doha, Bright said if anyone was rude to him he would, he would, well he would … He never specified what he would do. He was hinting that he would punch another boy. Why did he not come out and say it? I suppose because in reality he knew he would not hit anyone. This is not because he was not a bully. It was because he was a coward. But at the same time he liked talking tough. He was a very transparent scaramouche.

In Lawrence of Arabia one character tells another, ”When God made you a fool he gave you a fool’s face.” So too it was with Bright. This dullard looked dim. As someone I know used to say of people like Bright, ”I looked into his eyes and there was nobody at home.”

His name was as though his parents were playing a cruel practical joke on him. Bright Soul – there was no one dimmer or duller of soul than him. His name was singularly inapposite. Such a despicable oaf I have never seen. He totally lacked empathy for others. He could not comprehend other opinions. He did not have opinions but simply repeated his parents’ shibboleths verbatim. He was self-important due to his wealth. Money and self-worth were the same thing to him. So much for his faith favouring equality. He never reflected on his privilege. In fairness to him boys who are a baker’s dozen of years old seldom do.

Bright was unwittingly clownish. It soon took me all my self-control not to burst out laughing at him. His unstudied buffoonery extended from naivete, to his soup slurping to the languor of his movements.

Bright really was a miracle. He was the first ever five toed sloth. What are you best at? That is whatever you spend your free time doing. He simply mooched about.

In Lakeland Bright threw a schoolbag across the classroom. He was a nauseating brat. Where did he get all this behaviour from? Partly it is genetic but it is also environmental. He told me his father said he must never let anyone laugh at him. Why does Golden take himself so seriously? He has no sense of humour about himself. This suggests a very brittle ego. His father was also hypersensitive. Nothing was every his fault. Everyone else was responsible for his wrongdoings and failings. Like father like son. Bright was more his father’s son than the others. He did not try to understand the feelings of others.  He had no friends at all which was as many as he deserved.

Bright mentioned how a teacher at his previous school had reprimanded the Prime Minister’s daughter. The teacher was then rebuked and threatened. Bright did not comment on the girl’s behaviour or whether the teacher’s scolding of the child was fair. It was the fact that the girl’s father held a top job that meant that she was immune from criticism. Any notion of fairness or egalitarianism was entirely alien to him. Where did he get that attitude from?

Bright thought he was special rather than special needs. He would purposefully wear the wrong clothes to school – just to underline his belief that he was too important to follow the rules. In fairness when I was a teenager I sometimes got a kick out of breaking such rules. This was not due to thinking I was above the law. It was the thrill that I might be caught. I did not imagine that I was so high status that I could do so with impunity.

I am an ordinary person in that I have done a little good and a little bad. Bright did not seem to have done anyone a good turn in his life. He was certainly not hiding his light under a bushel. He was eager to talk up his ‘feats’ in wrestling and he boasted of his supposedly encyclopedic knowledge of theology. Yet he never mentioned having done a good deed. Had he ever given a present without expecting one back? Had he ever donated a brass farthing to the needy? Had he ever befriended a lonely child? Had he ever stuck up for someone who was being picked on? Had he ever forgiven someone? Had he ever told the truth when it was hard to do so?

Bright was obstinate. It was hard to get him to write. He also went to the loo for ages. He was not as opinionated as his elder sibling. However, unlike Emperor was not independent minded to any extent. He parroted the ravings of his grandfather. These were jejune and half-baked conspiracy theories about how Obama was a marionette of the Jews. He was crass, lethargic entitled and despicable. The poem The Idiot Boy could have been dedicated to him. Most people his age do not have much of an inquiring mind but this boy was especially unthinking. He had been conditioned not to have a critical faculty. But even without this brainwashing he would never have developed opinions of his own.

Bright had bad bearing. He was too idle to even stand up properly. He shuffled around – so lazy he would not even pick up his feet. Slouching would one day give him chronic back pain that he richly deserved. He had a mental block. Bright was totally reclacitrant. He could not pronounce ”h” no matter how many times it was drilled. It came out as ”kh”. Being mentally subnormal does not make him bad. It was his disgusting brutality that made him bad.

Trying to get this boy to write was to be Canute against the tide. But I failed to motivate him. I had him read aloud. His voice was far from euphonious. He was always dallying about doing his work. His drowsy eyes suggested he seldom understood me.

The boy shambled around slowly. He was slow in everything he did – speaking, learning, writing etc…. This boy disbelieved in the Theory of Evolution because he was the missing link itself. Itself not himself.

Bright was mutton minded and that was not his fault. Five schools in as many years would mess up the education even of a wunderkind. Bright was not just changing schools or cities but countries and even languages. His low ability is a cause for compassion and not contempt. It was his personality which is what earned him my disdain and dislike.

Bright spoke about serving in the army of his country. He knew of military schools and if you go there ”you are a real man” he said with awed respect. A man? This big weed hardly qualified as a toddler. He was so hyper sensitive and lacking in drive or discipline. He said they were only allowed out for the day if their clothes were immaculate. This waster had never washed his clothes in his life. I pointed out that soldiers are severely beaten up by their commanders. He had told me stories of his bodyguards being beaten in the army. He said this was true but he proudly informed me that his grandfather had sway and would see to it that no one touched him. For once this child was on the money. If he was not going to have to be subjected to military school what was the purpose of attending military school? As always with them it was for show. It was the pretence. They always strove for the appearance of things because they could never achieve the substance. It seemed his had inherited the faux manliness of his father and the intolerance of countervailing thoughts.

He had a memory like a sieve. He was so slothful that soon he had me doing his work for him. I did not give a damn. It was less work to get rid of him and do it myself. His education had got off to a faltering start. He had attended seven schools in six years. I am fairly sure he was never booted out of one. He would have bragged about it if he had been slung out on his ear as he richly deserved. These constant moves were down to moronic parenting. This ceaseless chopping and changing depleted what little knowledge he had as he was confused by different languages and systems.  His education had been totally disjointed. It says much for his general all around stupidity that he could not do 5 x 5 by the end. I would teach him something and have him repeat it. But then it was in one ear and out the other. He was forever grumbling that his school was no good. He was worthy only of disdain.

Bright claimed to speak Centralian. On the retreat his bro had translated from Russian into that language. Bright never did. Bright had attended a Turkish school in Ashgabad for a while and boasted that he could converse in Turkish. Yet when we were in Turkey he had me speak the language for him. He was a stranger to truth yet again. Let me be clear – as David Cameron used to say. I know only a teensy bit of Turkish. Unlike Bright I do not overstate my abilities.

I do not deprecate those of low academic ability. They can achieve other things and be very genial. This moron was totally meritless and entirely without virtue. He was the unthinking man’s slob. He was a marathon time waster.

There was a snake in the Science room. Bright was terrified of it he said. But all of a sudden he was not. The beast was to be fed a live mouse. Bright went close to see the reptile devour the unfortunate rodent. Sweet child! It is easy to perceive why this boy empathised with the snake. He is cold blooded, cannot communicate, sleeps all the time waking only to eat and personifies wickedness.

Bright felt disdain towards Filipinos. Including those who professed the same faith as himself. He said his assistant could not speak English. She spoke far better than he did. He could not abide it when she laughed at him. He was the most risible figure ever. He was sensitive to ridicule because he sensed that he is ridiculous.

In his free time he lounged around. He was a waste of space. In any decent society he would struggle to get a job as a bin man.

In a group situation he was diffident. He was severely lacking in self-belief. A deux he was boastful.

=================

MILK

Little Milk was a decent sort. There was nothing wicked in him. As he got to know me he overcame his reticence. At the start he spoke in a soft and unvarying tone of voice. His answers were monosyllabic. I would notice he was weary and suggest ending a lesson. He was so decorous that he would not answer. In time he opened up.  He grew more animated. We would joke. I would regale him with animal noises. I would do impressions of my great uncle Frank with the bald head. Frank had the loudest and most raucous laugh ever. As he laughed at earsplitting volume he would rub his scalp vigorously with both palms. This is how he became bald. In fact I never met Frank – he died before my birth.

I have christened this child since he was a milksop. I do not lament that – he was very manageable. As a square he was fairly industrious and ductile. He was also predicable.

Milk was phlegmatic and introverted.  Those with centre partings tend to be geeks and he was one. He preferred objects to people. As he developed a bond with me he grew more loquacious. He was fixated with space travel. He developed hobbies such as chess and football. I hold out some hope for him.

There is also a benjamin of the family. She is too young to judge. I hope she bucks the trend. The chances are not good because the family environment is so poisonous.

========================

MRS GOLDEN

This woman is the villain of the piece. Her name was ‘Soul.’ It was bitterly ironic since she was the most soulless person imaginable. I cannot limn her other than with an acid pen. She is most miserly and mean spirited person I ever heard of. Destiny dealt her the best possible hand. She was fairly smart and pretty. She was high born in that her father was a prison governor. Torturing political prisoners counted as highly respectable and even honourable in her country at the time. At 17 she married a young man from a prominent family. Her beau also had good job prospects. She seemed to have been permanently mentally arrested at the age of 17. She was as impetuous, willful, unreasonably unreasoning and choleric as the most spoilt teenager. Mother Nature had blessed Mrs. G with a pretty visage. Her healthy complexion was an odd contrast to ugliness of her conduct.  She had an incalculable amount to be grateful for: wealth beyond belief, a generous husband, four children who were healthy physically if not psychologically and she had looks. Morally, she was an ogress.

Mrs. G was a woman of unrelieved loathsomeness. She was ice cold towards people except when she was shrieking abuse at them. It is small wonder that this rebarbative shrew seemed to have no friends. Nor is it any surprise that her children were a contemptible race.

Some people mature faster by having children young. Their responsibilities force them to become responsible. With Mrs. G it was the polar opposite. She was belligerent, vain and profanely self-centred. She cared only about filthy lucre and was the most negligent parent I have ever met. It struck me that she had a narcissistic personality disorder and oppositional defiant disorder. Recalcitrance, impetuousity, petulance and childishness were among her less objectionable traits.

I wonder whether Mrs. G even finished school. In my part of the world a girl who gives birth at 18 is considered a failure. But Mrs G had it made. She lived a life of the highest luxury without doing a minute’s work. Yet it was all ”woe is me”. Her theme tune seemed to be ”Reasons to be cheerless.” She was the archetypal poor little rich girl. I do not imply that she had anything in common with Barbara Hutton of the film Poor Little Rich Girl. Barbara Hutton at least felt compassion for the impecunious and gave away much of her wealth.  Mrs. Golden is perhaps the most self-centred person of all time. Her behaviour was so often invidious. There was no sense of l’embarrasement de richesse. She was rapacious and disgustingly selfish.

The woman had left school without education aged 17. Yet as an educational consultant remarked this female considered herself a world expert on tertiary education. It was indicative of her dearth of self-awareness that she was so ultracrepidarian. She should not have presumed to judge above her fuck me boots.

Mrs. G just popped out her babies. There her responsibility towards them ended. They were handed over to nannies. She was canny enough to select hefferlumps as nannies. That way there was little chance that her husband’s wandering eye would land on a nanny. So she had more gumption than I had initially given her credit for. Yet Mrs. G was as two faced as can be: pretending to care about her children in public.

Mrs. Golden expected glowing reports on her sons each time. Only in Milk’s case was it possible to write on while being only a little dishonest. Remarks that were less than saccharine irked her. She usually would make no comment at all. When she did so it was weeks after the event. She was tardy in everything.

Mrs. G was the worst of billionaire trash. She was willful and haughty. She always strove to underscore her standing by inconveniencing others. She set a terrible example for her sprogs. She was vindictive, deceitful and hypocritical. I saw a lot of these traits in her eldest two sons. Is this due to heredity or to the environment? Probably both. Her social-cognitive impairment was flagrant. She would never examine things from another person’s standpoint. This explained her extreme egocentricity. The discipline she tried to uphold with her sons was very erratic. They were given no clear boundaries. This was making them sociopathic.

Mrs. G was so self-important. She never tried to understand another person’s feelings. She did not seem to consider this a problem.  She had a greatly inflated sense of her own worth and always demanded preferential treatment. She was obsessed with fantasies of success for her sons despite them doing nothing to accomplish this. Mrs. G wanted them to be part of elite institutions without having to earn a place. She wanted unstinting obedience but thought rules did not apply to her. She was very exploitative and stuck up. She was extremely envious and mean – she bitterly resented every penny spent on her staff.

Rich bitch was having someone sent from the USA to help her sons. The agent found a flight and asked Mrs. Golden’s permission to book. It took some hours for Mrs. G to reply. She approved. Then the agent went to book and the flight had gone up $20. The ticket was bought. When the bill came Mrs. G was fulminating about the $20. Rather than be happy that she had hundreds of millions of dollars she preferred to gripe about 20 bucks. None of it was her money anyway. It was all stolen! This egotistical termagent had never earned a brass farthing in her life. Here was a woman who derived satisfaction only from stealing and possessing – never from giving and doing.

Evidence of her emotional incontinence and general ignorance can be seen in her writing style. She used exclamation marks! A lot!! In fact more and more of them!!! In every sentence!!!! Which shows what a moron she was!!!!!

This angel faced virago was not quite all there. She was socially retarded and utterly lacking emotional intelligence. Her extreme self centredness extended to being an exceptionally shite mother. She would not make eye contact when speaking to people. There was clearly a screw loose. She had never cared a fig for anyone else including her own sprogs. Her husband’s physical hideousness was outmatched by the wife’s hideousness of personality. Imagine a billionairess who is pinch penny towards her underpaid maids. She did not pay for their health insurance to which they were legally entitled. Imagine earning 12 pounds a day!

The woman was caught between her husband’s new found God bothering ways and her own It girl fantasies. Her egomania and avarice were bottomless. She circulated photos of herself in hot pants and a crop top. Her spouse was trying to induce her to find God. This woman was reluctant. What is it about the faith that is unappealing to a 21st century woman? It is not hard to tell. But I would rather that she was a cock tease than she was in an abbaya.

Soul Golden was so out of touch. How could she not be never having earned a penny in her life? As will be seen it is not as though she was a housewife either. Her sons were lackadaisical and cowardly. They did not even flush the loo after themselves. They were chips off the old block. She was such a useless laggard herself.  Yet she said they should go to West Point. She was unwittingly hilarious! I would pay good money to see the eldest two being torn to shreds by a drill sergeant. These slothful fuckwits would be laughed off the parade ground on the first day. She was raising her sons to be the touchiest and idlest wimps. She also toyed with the idea of them going to military school in Russia. That was the Suvorov. The woman was utterly delusional. The Russian Army is not tough. It is utterly brutal. Dozens of men are killed by their sergeants every year. Others commit suicide. There is a special rich boys’ section of these military schools for the privileged. It defeats the whole purpose of going to army school. The boys could attend such as school in Central Asia. Bright told me eagerly his grandfather could tell the school not to harm him, ”and they won’t do nothing to me” he said in his ungrammatical English. I had dinned it into him time out of number that in English a double negative is a positive. I know it is different in Russian. I would explicate the rule and get him to repeat it back to me. I worked through several examples aloud and on paper. I would have him play it back to me. Five minutes later he would be making the same mistake again. He had a mental block.

Why send them to a military school to be treated with kid gloves? It was a classic example of their illogicality, injustice and lack of probity all rolled into one.

Her temperament was over sensitive. She was totally insensitive to others. Perhaps she had been overly admired by others. She did not give her children realistic feedback about their performance. She was overindulged as a child I suppose. She certainly overvalued her two good for nothing sons. She was totally unreliable and was no caregiver herself. She was not clever enough to be manipulative. She seemed to perceive her sons as a measure of her self-esteem but oddly did nothing for them.  Mrs. G would jet off on a break from doing nothing. As she went on holiday the boys were in charge. Lunatics taking over the asylum and all that.

Mrs. Golden was an unfit mother. In another country the authorities would have taken the children off her. She would fly away on shopping trips for several days at a time and leave them without adult supervision – including the 8 year old. Yes, there were servants but the boys ordered them about. Mrs. G wanted us to be strict. If we were that was cruel she said. If we were lax we were letting her down. No one could win but she was never wrong. She suffered from a complete lack of fairness of introspection.

Mrs. G sometimes said she felt guilty for bringing them up so appallingly. Why were they floundering? Did she ever look in the mirror? What sort of example did she set of immaturity, irregularity, self-pity and angst? She was not at all contrite about her woeful underperformance.

If this woman had accomplished something I might have accorded her a smidgeon of respect. If she had gone riding, if she had played the cello, if she written a trashy novel or even read one – if she had done something worthwhile with all the free time and money in the world then she would have contributed something. In fact this harridan was a total waste of space. She was as vacuous as can be. Hilariously she opened a restaurant and ‘managed’ it from thousands of miles away. This way the empty headed girl could tell herself that she was a businesswoman. She had never succeeded in anything. She was as vapid, thick and heartless as can be.

Jean Paul Getty, the oil billionaire, said that a businessman’s wife has no excuse for being bored. She has all the free time and all the money in the word to devote herself to a cultural attainments, charity work or – heaven forbid – a career. Such a woman who moans about being under-stimulated it making a feeble excuse for idleness. The nihilism of her regrettable existence was a marvel. She was plainly suffering from wealth fatigue syndrome.

Mrs. G was unreasonable. She was very easily offended for herself and vicariously. If any teacher was obliged to reprimand her wayward children she was outraged. It did not enter her thick skull that the teacher might be obliged to scold her sons for their slovenliness, sluggishness, tardiness, rudeness and woeful work. She was super touchy and very anxious to assert her status. Deep down she must have realised she had no status. She refused to obey rules and comply with requests for information from me or from the school. It was as though she was seeking to irritate others. She never had the decency to own up to her own mistakes and shortcomings. Her parenting was atrocious.

What this female had in dollars she lacked in grace, sophistication, taste and even common decency. Her between-maid was far more of a lady than this unrefined termagent. She also lacked any notion of noblesse oblige.

Mrs. Golden took some English lessons. She was very unpredictable about them – the timings and what she wanted. She never got to grips with our vernacular. Of course about five lessons were too much for her busy schedule. In the British Isles we are paranoid about child protection. I was not worried about being alone in the house with any of her sons. Not only am I totally innocent but I know that Centrasians are not fixated with child abuse and are not going to false accuse someone. I was faintly frightened of being alone with the mother. If my foot accidentally touched hers under the table that could be seen as a comn-on. If she misperceived me as being in any way flirtatious that would be said to be an attempt on her virtue. In a shariat state it is less than ideal to be an infidel man accused of attempting adultery with a Muslim millionaire’s wife.

She went on holiday every month or so. She left her children behind of course.

Mrs. G was soulless despite being named Soul! She was grasping and larcenous. She cared only for threads and not for things of the spirit. Her materialism was yet more proof of her vacuity. The virago was also utterly philistine.

Soul worked on her appearance. She never appeared with unvarnished nails. Her days consisted of shopping and going to the beautician. Those garments do not buy themselves you know! Mostly it was online shopping. Going to a shop was too much like hard work. I would love to ridicule her to her face – archbitch.

The mother was the most negligent mother of all time. She did not wash her baby, dress her, read to her, play with her, feed her, carry her, speak to her or even look with her. Outside she would be all lovey dovey with the baby – like an actress. As soon as she was in the house the baby was plonked into the arms of the nanny. She was utterly false. There are crackheads who do more for their kids than she did.  She is unworthy to conceive a child. She disgraces the name of mother. But with her husband being middle aged, morbidly obese and a chain smoker it is doubtful that even a packet of Viagra can cause him to get a hard on. If he climbs on his skeletal wife he would probably crush her. The man is as sexy as a retarded walrus so I cannot imagine the sight of him naked set’s Mrs. G’s pulse racing – unless it is with panic. Perhaps sexual frustration is part of her misery. The good news is that this gruesome twosome shall pullulate no more. The world is already overburdened with their wasteful and odious offspring.

I taught Mrs. G a few lessons. The times were always changing. 8:30 one morning. It was due to be 10:30 the next. Then she would bring it forward to 9:30. Next day was due to be 9 am but she would suddenly postpone till 11 am. Next day it would be 10 am but she would cancel at the last minute.  She was so whimsical that she gave up after a few lessons.  During one such lesson I mentioned Valentine’s Day. Her eldest had been in a dilemma as some at his school said it was a sin. Of course idiot boy did not know the English for sin but I knew the Russian word. Bear in mind he has had private lessons in English since as soon as he could walk and I have never had a single lesson in Russian. Mrs. G said that Valentine’s Day could be immoral but for her and her husband it was nice to have some private time. That was hilarious! The big galoot of a husband of hers – as sophisticated as a buffalo being romantic? Oh yes and the most self-centred woman in the world actually loving someone? It was a risible image.

Mrs. G wanted her sons to do well at school but did not make them attend. She was the pinnacle of irrationality. At least this fishwife made no pretence at religiosity.

People who send an urgent email to Mrs. G. She would not reply. The person would then phone and she would not pick up. Texts also met with a wall of silence. The person would contact her by every means for three consecutive days. A week later there would be a response. But if Mrs. G wanted something she wanted it now, she wanted it yesterday. Why did you not do what she wanted before she even thought of it? If she felt slighted she was blistering. It suggested that she had oppositional defiant disorder. Her eldest sons had a touch of it. She did not seem to ‘do’ interpersonal relations. She never seemed satisfied.

Mrs. G was anti-social and histrionic. She had two modes – indolence and fury. I was drily cynical about her but she was not easy to predict. She had no conscience and was amoral. Perhaps she was compensating for feelings of inadequacy which is why she wanted all those clothes. She was unscrupulous about theft and exploitation. She was negativistic which is why she was cruel to others. She only had pseudo achievements – owning things. Maybe a high childhood status had made her so – adored by parents who taught her that ripping people off is admirable. She had a superiority complex which is why she wanted the rules to be broken for her.

Oddly, she was not that vain. She was guiltless about being so inhumane to her servants. How could a mother be so callous?  Her narcissism was mainly of the elitist type. She did not try to be seductive or famous. Indeed she was very much into privacy.

This greedy and criminal woman often moaned about how much she paid me. She paid me? The company paid me. I am not moralistic. I am tainted too. Every time I was paid I received stolen goods.

This harridan was as rapacious and grasping as you can imagine. Yet she felt so sorry for herself. Her self-pity was as sick making as her cruelty. Think of the tens of thousands of pounds she spent on glad rags for herself every year. With just a fraction of that money she could have saved the lives of children in Burkino Faso. But no she would rather spend sickening sums on threads for herself that she would never wear. But doing a good turn for another did not seem to occur to her. Mr Golden had at least had the gumption to use the state to steal money. Mrs. G had not had the get up and go or low cunning to even steal.

Mrs. G bought clothes almost daily. I only met her perhaps 20 times. Yet I sometimes saw her wearing the same outfit. She had 4 houses and presumably a full wardrobe in each of them. She had millions of dollars of ill-gotten gains. But I almost never saw her smiling. The vacuity of riches was one of the most valuable lessons I drew from observing this unhappy thief. She never, ever put anything back into the society she had robbed. It was all take, take, take…

Many of her possessions were not even from hubby’s salary or even from theft. These were grace and favour items owned the company but which they could use. Or should that be disgrace and favour items.

Ways forward were offered to her for her under achieving children. Agreements were made and signed. But there was no follow through. It was always later, later, later. Yes, No, Yes, No, No, Yes, No, Yes, Yes. Definitely maybe. Do I make myself unclear? She was unreliable even to herself. What example did this world class loser set for her progeny? Her empty life was the most contemptible thing about her. That is saying something!

Mrs. Golden was argumentative. She was an extreme authoritarian who could not abide being under the authority of others – besides her husband.

Despite her fitness sessions it was not as though she got to be nifty on the dance floor. She may have wanted a glamorous social life. Instead at best she got to socialise with her hubby’s boorish pals. The fact that she even took exercise says something for her. Her sons did not get their Olympian idleness from her.

There was a much put upon maid named Maia. This luckless Maia also had her first child at 18. Unlike Mrs. G this woman named Maia did not come from a privileged family. She cared for her three children. In her late 20s she was obliged to seek work abroad to supplement her husband’s meagre salary. Mrs. G promised poor Maia that after a year Maia would be allowed a holiday to go and visit her little children. Twelve months passed and she told her children she would soon be home. Maia asked permission to go. Mrs. G would not even let the maid finish her sentence. The answer was a flat no. ”We are busy now. Maybe I will let you go in a few months. Maybe.” Maia spent all night in tears. Imagine Maia telling her three little children desperate to see their mother that mum could not come for months more. As if a dozen indoor servants was not enough? Letting this unfortunate woman see her children would not have cost Mrs. G an ob. How could she do this? How could she? As one mother to another? She did not deserve a child. What a harridan. I felt the deepest disdain for her over his mistreatment of her maid.

These many sob stories from Maia had an effect on me. She looked at me pleadingly as if to say: could you help? I had not the heart to disappoint her totally. I did help her a little. I have no doubt these hard luck stories were true.

Maia told me the boys did not even flush lavatories after themselves.  I was later to discover such disgusting evidence for myself. They are very refined indeed. Where did they get this extreme laziness from? It is not hard to guess. Their mother was too idle to even eat properly.

Maia was to be paid a pittance. Even then that was not paid in full or on time. Her family was forced to borrow money to make ends meet. They then had to repay it at an exorbitant rate of interest. Maia was to get health insurance but it was not provided. A year’s health insurance cost almost half a month’s salary. How much would that have cost? About $200. Mrs. G would spent that amount on a blouse that she would never wear. Mrs. Golden was greedy and proud of it. It was all ”me, me, me”. She did not give a shit about anyone else including her children. She is lower than vermin. Her veins flow with the foulest poison.

It is a heartbreaking tale of savage selfishness and shameless exploitation. I would that her evil existence comes to an agonising end but only after she knows what it is to be stooped over all days scrubbing floors with a J cloth whilst being publicly humiliated.

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FAMILY HISTORY

The family history is intriguing and instructive.

Mr. Golden’s parents came from Southtown. Mr. Golden’s dad had been in the army and police. He was then Minister of the Interior.

Mrs. Golden’s family came from Blacktown. Mrs. Golden’s dad had been in charge of slave labour camps. Little surprise that they switched from an ideology that enslaved millions to a religion that permitted it. What sort of a man would wish to work in such an oppressive system? This may explain the boys’ fixation with punishment. On the other hand they responded the mildest rebuke by a teacher with a sense of wounded indignation.

Many people in Blacktown were exogenous. It was the most multi ethnic town in the USSR. This is what Mrs. G could not speak Centralian.

One must not visit the sins of the father on the son. I do not blame the children for the wrongdoing of their grandparents. It was difficult to avoid the conclusion that some of the negative traits were in the blood.

The grandparents had been born in the 50s. They grew up on agitprop.

Mr. Golden said he was a piss poor pupil. At least he had the self-awareness and honesty to say that much. It was a very rare example of accurate self-analysis on his part. Looking at his progeny I can believe it. Genes like his is it not a crime against humanity to pass them on? He had attended university and studied something. He was not noted for an interest in anything recondite. Once he graduated he wed a damsel from a similar oppressor background. He may even have been good looking aged 21.

The police was a well recognised bolt hole for dolts. If a man could not secure any other job then he would join the police. It was a good job for the ineducable, the unemployable and the idle. The police commanded very little respect in the USSR. The tough guys joined the military. The clever boys joined the secret service. The police were neither tough nor clever. Golden did a few years as PC Plod. No doubt he was promoted double quick because father pulled strings. It is all about exchange of favours. Then he was made a judge. I do not think he will be ranked with Solomon, Lord Denning or Justinian for his jurisprudential reasoning. He went back to university. Was he attracted by the life of the mind? Golden was then awarded an engineering degree in two months flat. How so? Presumably, he did not a stroke of work. Then he was made boss of a semi state construction company. A man with no knowledge of engineering and no business experience was made head honcho of a construction company. I could not think of anything more irrational or unfair. What is common to the three jobs he did? There is ample scope for kickbacks. Of ill-gotten gains there were plenty.

These people were as over-privileged as can be. To think that 25 years before they were communists. They claimed to be diehard egalitarians. If I were in their position would I not exploit my unfair advantage? I would not do so to such a gross extent. I have a small amount of common decency.

There may yet be another revolution in that zone of the world. What happened to capitalist bloodsuckers in 1917? Some ended up swinging from lampposts.

The more I got to know about Golden the more I did not like the cut of his gib. Tub of Lard that he was he was not torpid only in terms of exercise. I noticed he always took short cuts – getting things he did not deserve. Taking them away from those who merited them.

Mr. G’s hobby was shooting wolves from a helicopter. A wolf skin (complete with head) was a rug in their house. I am surprised: I would have thought he would not kill these predators out of professional courtesy. They only attack the defenceless especially when they outnumber their prey. Did Mr. G not have a certain fellow feeling for them?

Mr. Golden was president of the country’s boxing federation. Not that a man so morbidly obese was capable of swinging at anyone. There was some kudos in heading this outfit. The appeal of it for him was mainly that it was intended to emphasise his tough guy credentials. Several of these athletes were proven to have taken performance enhancing drugs. In public statements Golden professed himself to have been stunned at horrified by people falling short of the highest ethical standards. Ha ha ha ! If he takes credit for their victories (and he does) then he must also assume responsibility for such disgraceful misconduct. Golden was an unsporting as one can be. Cheating was a way of life to him. Did he not at the very least connive in these prohibited practices? Did he order them? If he was unaware of them he should still be dismissed. It is precisely his duty to know what is going on in the organisation he leads.

Golden refused to partake of swine flesh. This was ironic since boar was his soubriquet in the family. I suppose he liked it as he fancied himself as a hard man.

Sometimes I would be in the house and notice him languidly reclining on a divan. He resembled an elephant seal: ungainly, blubbery and cacophonous. But that is unfair. To seals that is. Seals are intelligent animals. Seals do not indulge in pathetic puerile macho posturing. They actually fight. Moreover, seals can swim.

It turned out that Golden was a low down thief of the most cowardly and contemptible sort. A common criminal was respectable by comparison to this despicable crook. Yet he sickeningly swathed himself in robes of righteousness. He was a whited sepulchre. He suffered no prick of conscience. His dad was high up in the police – not an uncommon scenario when it comes to massive scale thievery.

Golden disappeared millions of $ in an international deal. All this went to the Bank of Nowhere. The dosh is squirreled away in a town which is well known for being a place to hide dirty money. He salted it away in a bank outside his own country. This man vaunted his patriotism but in fact he never trusted his own country’s institutions. This was an Olympian defalcation. This was hinted at by people who work for the same conglomerate. They have to be surreptitious. But they know to keep their heads down and feign respect for this egomaniac. It all figures. As soon as the money vanished he bought a hotel overseas. His property portfolio in countries without transparency suddenly expanded.  Presumably he had to give a drink to the prez and his henchmen. Mr. Golden’s filthy lucre was used on a property portfolio abroad and a yacht in France. Him scooping money from the public was not a victimless crime. Many patients will die because public hospitals cannot afford medicines for them. The penalty for theft in his religion is on the stiff side. Does he really believe in that? Why is he so eager to enjoy ill-gotten gains? It suggests a total lack of faith. If he really believed in his religion he would be satisfied with things of the spirit and savouring his reward in the hereafter. But no it was peculation and self-indulgence that actuated him.

Despite having so, so much he was not happy. It was never enough. He had no elan vitale otherwise he could have enjoyed some hobbies or achieved something. He preferred to laze around.

Golden is a true patriot. Of course he loves his country from which he pillaged hundreds of millions of dollars. He is anti-Robin Hood. He purloins from the poorest to give to himself. He had made a truly outstanding contribution. Few men have done so much for the immiseration of their people. His sanctimoniousness was nauseating.

Common criminals have a little sneakiness and daring. Using the agencies of the state to commit peculation requires no audacity or even low cunning. This clan was made up of mafioisi without even selfish courage.

Mr. G was close to the prez. Why did he praise this man to the heavens? Could it be that there was a sliver of self-interest? The clan were the most arrant time servers. This is a society in which brown nosing is compulsory. But Mr. G’s level of sycophancy was sickening even by Kazakh standards.

There was a touch of the mediaeval despot about Mr. Golden. Small wonder that he adulated neo feudalism in his homeland: he was one of the robber barons. He served the thief in chief in return for holding way over a fiefdom. Mr. G resembled Henry VIII in more ways than one. There was the insatiable avarice, the hypocrisy, the adultery, the gross feeding, the fake martial prowess, the magpie confection for glitter, the hypocrisy, the temper tantrums and the nauseating self-righteous rhetoric to surround it all.

I surmise that the family were concentration camp guards. This is judging from the family’s jobs and the towns they hailed from. If you say Blacktown to anyone from the USSR and he or she will say ‘concentration camp.’ Political prisoners and religious adherents were sent their in their tens of thousands. Ethnic minorities were enslaved in line with communist racist policies. In the 1930s up to a third of the Central population was starved to death. I do no criticise anyone for doing what was necessary to survive. I would have done likewise. I do not scorn the ordinary guards. But what sort of a man would rise to the apex of such a system of brutal exploitation and savage exploitation?  To be promoted a man would have to distinguish himself by being notorious for being particularly savage even in a system notorious of its inhumanity. Only the worst sort of low down thug and time server would. This clan had risen to the top be being the most eager instruments of oppression.

They were commies when that suited them; abjuring their faith. In order to join the Communist Party people had to make a declaration of atheism. It would not do to bring this to Mr. Golden’s attention. His forefathers had been apostates. When communism fell so did their communist beliefs. They had once imprisoned those who even whispered about independence. Then they proclaimed themselves nationalists. They re-found their faith at exactly the moment it became politically advantageous to do so.

The contract said I worked for the company. I was paid by them. I was part of the hypocrisy. Every time I was paid I received stolen goods.

I wonder about Golden’s methods of neutralisation. How does he justify industrialised theft? After all his is a very moral man – he reads a book. ”I am allowed to steal because I was in the police. No, no, when I steal it is legal because I was a judge. No, no: when I steal it is ok because my dad was Minister of the Interior. No, no, when I steal it is a morally upright thing to do because I am already rich.” When he was a judge how long did he award to a man who stole a wallet? It is sickening.

Golden had been the sacred meteorite. He is a very virtuous man. He has circumambulated a cube seven times. That is what really makes you good. A multi-millionaire stealing from a baby’s plate is totally permissible. This is what he did – almost literally. Which is worse? Drawing a cartoon or stealing from the malnourished? I have my answer and Golden has his.

If Golden really was holy he would have been penitent. He would have not purloined public wealth in the first instance. Even then he could have returned it to the state. But no he continued to worship the golden calf.

One injunction tells men who believe in the Book to wear beards. It is not a commandment but it is enjoined to the faithful as a virtuous act. Mr Golden did not grow a beard because people would think ill of him. So what mattered more to him? Serving his God or the esteem of men? As soon as his faith required him to make a teensy weensy sacrifice, like braving silent disapproval, Golden would abandon his faith.

Why had Mr Golden got religion in his 30s? Perhaps he sensed he was much in need of absolution. It is strange that he made such a show of virtue. For him the wages of sin are fucking fantastic. I hope his turn to religion is not a sign of nascent de-secularisation. He is religious in so far as it makes things easier. Smooths his path to the president and means he can sound righteous. The moment religion requires him to make a sacrifice it is gone. If religion requires him to, for example, not steal from the poor then religion be damned. He could steal a billion from the neediest – nothing wrong with that. But no one should drink beer – that would be an impiety.

When he visited the city forbidden to unbelievers he went in a spirit of piety. His faith teaches him the equality of the richest and the poorest mendicant. Of course he stayed in a five star hotel. I must not be too cynical. Mr. Golden was a sincere worshipper. Of Mammon that is. As well as his emetic greed this man was driven by a compulsion to emphasise his status. He plainly suffered from a deep seated sense of worthlessness.

They slept in the day during the fast. At night they got up to pig themselves. Where is the morality in that?

Golden was not much of a bon viveur unless you count eating. He was no gastronome. Horse flesh and rice were his favourite foods. He was no aesthete. He had a billion dollars and absolutely no taste.

Why do so many of his compatriots live in grinding poverty? Why are orphans so badly provided for? Could this have anything to do with some of the elite purloining from the masses? The kleptocracy makes my blood boil. What is really nauseating is that Mr. Golden having the temerity to think he is righteous because he mumbles certain incantations in a language he cannot understand. Golden and those of his ilk were living off the fat of the land. Their lucre is the filthiest of all. Their hyper consumerism and nauseating self-righteousness infuriated me. It made me see why people had become communists 100 years ago. The bitterest irony is that these people had been communists only 20 years before. The Golden’s were the most contemptible time servers. They would have happily been Hitler’s henchmen so long as they made some money out of it.

He has no faith in his own land. He goes to the doctor in Germany. Nobody trusts Centrasian qualification – particularly Centrasians. Golden would know something about being awarded degrees he did not earn. He knows qualifications can be bought in his homeland. It is all extremely unfair on those smart and hardworking Centrasians who earned their degrees the proper way. Academic fraud by the likes of Golden devalues the endeavour of all those with integrity. In many countries earning money through such fraudulently obtained qualifications is an imprisonable offence.

A dickie bird told me that Mr. Golden had a mistress in Ultenia and that she was nubile. That might not be true since I was getting it third hand. I would not put it past him to break his marriage vows. I do not disapprove since his wife was the worst harridan that ever lived. Why would a good looking young woman hang around a hideous ugly charmless loser like Golden? Money might have something to do with it. He had rendered himself incapable of infidelity due to his gross feeding. Which irks me about his adultery is that he professes a certain faith which preaches a rather stiff penalty for that offence.

What was Mr. Golden so obese? Why was he so avaricious? Was he filling a void? Perhaps this is cod psychology. Gluttony and financial greed are common even among those without any deep psychological flaws. He often lost his temper and was easily enervated. He was furious and resentful.

Mr Golden was as thin skinned as can be. He was Donald Trump without the business nous. He told the boys never to let anyone laugh at them. No one would ever laugh at Golden. It was easy for Golden to talk tough when accompanied by several armed guards. Why was Golden so touchy? Partly it was due to his extreme immaturity and wimpishness. It was also because he knew that he cut a ridiculous and contemptible figure. He knew that he was a fraud. A fraud as a graduate, a fraud as a copper, a fraud as a judge, a fraud as a businessman, a fraud as a man of God and a fraud as an adult. He had no hinterland and no self-worth because he was worth nothing.

There was a much put upon Pakistani driver – the One who answers all. As well as driving he had to act as a factotum. It was a very difficult role due to madam’s caprice. When she messed things and sent him to the wrong place she would roundly abuse him. It was her fault because she kept giving contradictory instructions but she did not give a damn.

A couple of years ago a Turcoman driver of theirs in Doha used the Ferrari while the family were away. The Pakistani driver found out about this. As a good and faithful servant the Pakistani informed on the Turcoman. I do not blame the Pakistani for doing his job. He was also saving his own skin. Had he not done so then he may have been accused of this. He would at the very least have been complicit in this. Golden flew in especially to confront the Turcoman. The man was summoned to the house. He was then treated to yelling by Golden. The boys told me how their father had been in a towering rage. I can picture his flabby face quivering with fury. In fairness Golden sacked the man and let him go without punishment saying ”God is his judge.” Golden stole hundreds of millions of dollars from the impoverished. Yet when someone else borrows – not steals – borrows his car without permission Golden screams like a hungry infant. But who really stole the car? In fact who really stole about 20 cars, five penthouses, two hotels, a helicopter, a super yacht etc…..? It was not the Turcoman driver? God is his judge. Indeed. God is also Golden’s judge. It reminds me of the parable of the man who was forgiven by another but was then very unforgiving to a debtor. Who is more in need of forgiveness? Is is a poor driver who uses a car without permission? Or is it someone who has had unjust enrichment through nepotism and then commits fraud to the tune of hundreds of millions of greenbacks? Golden was bereft of any notion of fairness. It reminded me of one of the parables. You ask your master to forgive you an enormous debt and he forgives you. Then you demand that a debtor repays you a penny – reacting furiously when he cannot repay you.

Golden liked to belief in ancient doctrines. Centuries of scholarship have only served to calcify them.

This pharisee had a poster of himself stating that he had been into the holy of holies. His belief in equality did not preclude him using his unfair advantages to the full. Irrationality came naturally to him. For him righteousness consists of gullibility, mumbo jumbo in a language he cannot comprehend and certain propitiations. The very notion of integrity was foreign to him. His real religion was the worship of Money – as though money makes someone morally upstanding. Did this self-proclaimed religious man want to build up riches in this world or the next? It is blatant. Of material wealth he was a most faithful votary.

Sadly he gave up shisha so he may not get the cancer that he so richly deserves.

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DOHA.

I sometimes read their irregular habits as deriving from the former nomadic lifestyle of this race. Their houses were not large or imposing in view of their staggering wealth. On the other hand they had a fleet of flash cars. Was this because the house equated to a yurt and was thus unimportant? On the other hand the cars were the modern equivalent of horses and it was vital to own as many of them as possible and superb ones at that? Maybe this was cod psychology. They had perhaps ended their itinerant existence a century before. There was something else I noticed about non-settled peoples. They were very elastic with timings. This was true of people of the Arabian Peninsula or East Africa. Herdsmen did not favour periodicity and continuity. They were constantly on the move and responding to weather. As Argentines and Italians are said to be very lax about punctuality perhaps my observation is codswallop.

I discovered the Centralian word for book was ‘kitab’ the same as in Arabic. Before Muslim missionaries brought their faith to the benighted people of the steppes perhaps they had no books.

The house in Doha was by the sea on a man-made island. It was a spacious three storey white building. The marble floors were scrubbed daily by a much put upon Filipina between maid. A wolf’s skin complete with head adorned the entrance hall. This set the tone for the kitsch that pervaded their house. Risibly a piano took pride of place. No one there ever tinkled the ivories. Both Emperor and Bright claimed to play musical instruments. But I never saw them doing so nor did they tell me of an occasion in my 2 years with the clan when they had played any music. Bright also informed me that music was un-Islamic. How on earth could he believe this and then also play an instrument? He was capable of such blatant doublethink.

The boys carried on with egregious indolence. They pretended not to have homework. Lousy grades were explained by the teacher entering it wrong into the system. The grade has since been raised. Or the system had a malfunction. He had done some work that had not yet been marked and that was due to earn a fantastic grade. It was laughable. They were totally disorganised. They were stinking rich in both senses. Their wealth was obscene and it was obtained through illegal means. Yet their vast fortune afforded them little contentment. Their self of entitlement meant that they derived little satisfaction from living the life of Reilly. The penthouses, the swimming pool, the sports cars, the servants, the delicious banquets, the computers, the clothes, the private jets, the super yacht:  took it all for granted.

A contract was drawn up at Mrs. Golden’s suggestion. There was an exchange of obligations. They were not to use phones during lessons etc… Repeated breaches of these terms were reported. As the boys confidently predicted the contract was not enforced by their parents. It soon became a dead letter.

Mrs. Golden was full of avoidance tactics. She would never take responsibility for her actions or her inaction. Her sons were faithful copies of her in this sense. What example did she set for her children? I would not put her in charge of a doll let alone four children. She was forever shifting the blame to schools. They were culpable for her children being loafers and failures. In fairness, Milk was performing decently. The boys were loafers but she could not face it that she was to blame. She was totally immature.

Mrs. G had never been thwarted. She had always had her way. This is why she was so petulant. I pray that an agonising fate awaits her.

I would like to see her do a labour of Sysephus – stooped over scrubbing floors for the rest of eternity. She really needed to be humiliated and taught what work is.

I told them to try. Practice makes perfect – I would have thought that adage is irrefragable. They would not obey instructions. Unsatisfactory does not begin to describe their effort. I am also culpable. I did not give a damn about their schooling. I like learning more than teaching. I only wished to teach pupils with a high aptitude and a great appetite for learning.

The boys were dispirited about the move. Milk was stressed out about not being in a school. He was so frustrated that he lashed out and thumped me during a lesson. All the grief he was going through was entirely avoidable. It was caused by his parents’ instability, injudiciousness and stupid decision making.

I met their cousin World. World was the son of Hal. World spoke perfect English for a child his age. He was a very genial chatterbox. This spindly boy was the most amiable member of the clan.

Milk was taken by a school soon enough. Emperor was rejected a few times. Finally a school was desperate enough to take him. Bright was rebuffed by half a dozen schools. It was mid-October and they still had not located a place of education for him. I suggested the Russian school. They would not hear of it. It had to be an Anglophone school. I noted that Bright had previously had his schooling through the medium of Russian. The Russian school is at least a school which is far better than no school at all. Moreover, he would still have English lessons there and with me. They point blank refused to even consider it. Perhaps a factor in their considerations is that the standard of Maths in Russian schools is a few years ahead of Soviet schools. This boy could not do 6 x 2.

After much arm twisting and no doubt some palms crossed with silver Bright was accepted into an American school.

Bright was terrified of the snake in the Science room – or so he told me. When it came to it he had no problem going in despite knowing what beast was in there. One day the teacher was doing to feed a rodent to the serpent. Bright then said he would stay at break time to see the little creature killed. What does that say about him? It suggests a sadistic and morbid character. Sweet child!

Bright was as lethargic as ever. He was also a hypochondriac. What a waste of space he was. But as for spite: he had it in spades. When a Filipina assistant spoke in a less than respectful tone his conceited tantrum overcame his extraordinary listlessness. He was actuated to write a letter of complaint to the headmistress.

I explained that the mind is like a muscle. The more you exercise it the better it gets. If life weights for you it puts muscle on me not you. But if you do not exercise it then your mind will atrophy. If I do your homework in the long run it does a disservice. These idle fools did not budge. I am not disclaiming responsibility. I failed them too. I failed to motivate them – not that I cared. They were world champions in sloth.

I told them they had to make an effort. Achievement is ability multiplied by effort. Notice it is not plus effort. It is multiplied by effort. A very high innate aptitude will lead to zero achievement of the aptitude it multiplied by zero effort. Emperor understood and agreed. Yet action speaks louder than words. Or in his case inaction. But it never caused him to change tack. I explained that cheating was wrong. He was bemused by the very notion of probity. To think he robed himself in the garments of righteousness to visit the meteorite. His book tells him to tell the truth even if this involves bearing witness against himself. He also told me that incantation that comes before swearing he speaks veraciously. Those who vaunt their own honesty so much as the most dishonest. A chip off the old block!

They were staggered that someone of my qualifications did my job. They were so mercenary they did not understand that someone would value quality of life. Of course they will be given sinecures. They will have jobs but not work. These boys had no sense of noblesse oblige yet they felt not the least inclination to do anything – even for themselves. They had been given so, so much and achieved absolutely nothing. They attended the most expensive school in the country and had a private tutor on top. To think some children do not get to attend school at all!

The mother had a bee in her bonnet about Synonyanto. She wanted her boys to be schooled there. Her friends’ children had done well there. She was oblivious to the fact that these children will have had to make an effort. People in the Shining South have a phenomenal work ethic. Fools are not suffered gladly there. Her laggards of sons would get short shrift in that country. Much time was wasted filling out forms for the school. I knew it to be futile. Emperor had to describe his achievements on the application form. It was a rare moment of levity for me hearing this outstanding underachiever claim to have accomplished much by lounging around and occasionally playing on his X box. He had wrestled occasionally. The only video he showed me of it – presumably his finest hour – was him being soundly thrashed.

Emperor was a child of reasonable ability. According to his mother he had won prizes in earlier years. She provided no corroboratory information. When? In which subjects? He bunked off school pretending to be ill. He was a most contemptible malingerer and filled with the most mawkish self-pity. He was worse than a wimp. Then he would return to school and find he was behind. So to avoid facing up to his workload he would again claim to be unwell and take time off school. Then he would return to school and find himself even further behind. He did not have the courage to confront the problem. Yet again he would say he was sick and stay at home for a week. It was a vicious cycle. He never grasped the nettle. His pathetic mother always caved in. She was moronic enough to think that missing a quarter of the schooldays was normal. She also said he had angina. Angina is found in the grossly obese and he was stick thin. It also affects heavy smokers. He did not smoke. It is almost unheard of in someone under 35. He was 15. Who diagnosed this? It was probably Dr Mum herself. She qualified from Hypochondria School of Medicine. She was guilty of criminal negligence towards her sprogs. Had I not known better I would guess that she was striving to ruin their education.

The autobiographical title ‘Chronicles of Wasted Time’ could have been written for these lads. They had a pool they never used. They were 10 metres from the sea and never swam in it. Such luxury for people of outstanding lassitude is a case of pearls before swine.

They thought their nationality was the master race. That included those of Russian blood. People who were citizens of their land were allowed home every fortnight. People from South East Asia or the Subcontinent were lucky to get home once a year.

When a Centrasian was ill the order was to take her to the best hospital and do not have regard to cost. But as for those from the Far East – let them die.

=====================

CONCLUSIONS

Private tuition is no substitute for effort. You can spend any amount you want on a child’s education and it will make little difference.  There must have been close to $100 000 spent each year on the education of each child. How many children in Burundi could have been schooled for that? The boys each received not far off 600 hours one on one tuition. The elder two achieved precious little. They tried very, very hard not to try. They were extremely inventive when it came to thinking up excuses not to work. Their mother helped them in coming up with ever more unlikely reasons for their failure. They failed not just academically but to act their age. They did not fail tests so much as fail to show up to tests. That is a double failure. I would not mind my child failing but I would object to the child not even attempting the test.

You will never find someone meaner than a billionaire. They did not become obscenely rich through liberality. I have worked for some ultra high net worth individuals who made their lucre through nous and graft. I accord them a modicum of respect. I have no such regard for kleptocrats. Their parsimony towards their sweated labourers is made more galling by their extreme extravagance.  It is the self-righteousness that accompanied their extreme selfishness that really sickened me. Goodness is savagely punished. Evil is lavishly rewarded.

Egregious idleness is no barrier to advancement in a nepotistic society. Even Bright will be awarded a degree he never studied for. His belligerent stupidity will matter not a jot. He will be given a job he is incapable of doing. A working class chap will have to do his work for him and be paid only a tenth of Bright’s salary. It is invidious. If one had to design a system to bring about under development you could not do better. It is a truly invidious state of affairs.

A billion dollars will not buy you class. That much put upon Filipina maid was ten times the lady that Soul was. I curse her from now to the crack of doom.

I am not seeking sympathy. I had a very easy time. I got paid stupid amounts to do very little. I recommend this job to others if you do not mind it turning you sardonic. What angers me is what was done to others. It is obloquial that such a situation pertains in the present day.

This screaming injustice makes my blood boil. But I triply underline that I have imagined this whole immorality tale.

=====================

THE MORAL OF THE STORY

It should be a cautionary tale. It is a lesson that we constantly need to be reminded of. It proves the ancient adage – money does not buy you happiness. Billionaires can be miserable too. These children had more than most people can ever dream of. Yet they are not happy because they do not appreciate it. It is all about being grateful for what you have rather than being resentful for what you do not have. Seek the happiness in your situation.  Do not spend time trying to find reasons to be grumpy.

One summer I was sustaining myself in London with casual work in language schools. When I say casual I mean that I was scarcely awake during the lessons. I saw an advertisement for a tutor to go to Shenyang, China for a month and tutor a boy who hoped to go to Eton. I answered the ad.

Days later I was interviewed by a ginger haired Old Etonian named Raff. He was a likeable sort and as thin as a whippet. It turned out we had some mutual acquaintances though this half Italian chap was a few years older than me and had been in a different house. We agreed a few particulars regarding the proposed short term job. He filled me in on the brief. The boy’s English name was Julius. Chinese people often choose English names because Anglophones sometimes find Chinese names unpronounceable. His parents owned a university. He was currently in prep school in the United Kingdom. He already spoke English. The parents wanted to improve him in that and other subjects.

I was issued with my visa and went to Heathrow one blazing summer’s evening. In the queue I chatted to a podgy old white British man who was going on holiday to Dalian. China is a ghastly place and I could not for the life of me imagine why anyone would go there were it not for the sake of amassing some filthy lucre. I had been to the People’s Republic of China a couple of years before but that is another story.

I was flying on China Eastern Airlines for the first time in my life. I was flying business class. The flight passed quickly because the seat turned into a bed. The air steward even dressed it with a sheet.

Chinese airlines definitely discriminate on looks. The Chinese believe in pretty privilege. They are ageist towards air hostesses. Hence their cabin crew are easy on the eye. Is that good for business? What do you think? The West is too PC to face the truth: sex sells. Men tend to be attracted to younger females. There is such a thing as biology.

I landed in Shanghai and I was exhausted. I walked down the corridors to the VIP lounge. This was a misnomer. It the business class lounge. It was not luxurious but it was at least calm, uncrowded and provided some free tucker. I dozed as best I could in an upright chair.

Later I had a flight to Shenyang. It is a large city in Manchuria – north-east China. That evening I walked out into the meeting area of Shenyang Airport.

I saw a middle aged man and a young lady holding a sign bearing the words ‘George William.’ They had my middle name and not my surname. But I figured this must mean me. There are not too many people in deepest darkest China with these names.

The young lady was beaming and introduced herself as Alice. Her English was nearly perfect. The man was her father and he only spoke Mandarin. I knew a few pleasantries in the language and I deployed them. The father was a balding well-built man of 6’1’’ so he was almost gigantic for a Chinese of his generation. He seemed deeply placid and faraway.

Alice was spare and had very clear and youthful skin. Her dark eyes were not hooded and her features were very even. She was very nubile but I noticed that she let the hair in her armpits grow freely which I found very off-putting.

Into the car – we drove down the nearly deserted motorway and past a police checkpoint. Soon we were in the city. It had the bog standard Chinese tower blocks – all enormous monsters. On the way I spoke with Alice.

‘’I am studying in Paris at the moment’’ she chirped, ‘’I want to learn French. I am Julius’ sister.’’ She said.

‘’I speak French’’, I said.

‘’Yes, I know. We saw your CV’’ said Alice merrily, ‘’my dad is most impressed with your education because he owns a university.’’

I estimated her to be aged about 20. It emerged that the family had four children. Four! They were all born under the One Child Policy. This policy did not prohibit additional children. It merely said that those who had them were required to pay a fine. If that was paid then there was no disgrace or disapproval. Only very wealthy families could pay the fine. It was a matter if great prestige to have so many children.

‘’I got two big brothers’’, said Alice, ‘’but they both study far away’’ she added with a smile. I never met the big siblings.

We then drove into a compound with small houses only two or three storeys tall. This was very unusual for the middle of a Chinese city. It also gave an indication of just how affluent they were. Very few urban dwellers can afford to reside in a house.

The car drew up at an old style Chinese house – the handiwork on the exterior was intricate. Was this one of the few survivors from before the Cultural Revolution? There were even little white dragons on the balustrade of the stairs that led up to the front door.

We stepped into the house. At this point we all removed out shoon as is the custom on Far Cathay. The interior was mostly dark wood and a highly polished wooden floor. The furniture was all classical Chinese. Almost every surface was covered in chinoiserie as one might expect. I recognized the statue of Confucius that is seen in so many Chinese households. There was also a hearth but not blazing therein – it was the wrong time of year for that. They told me it got down to minus 20 degrees celsisus here in the bleak midwinter.

It was rather late and Julius was asleep. The house was not large. I was staying in a bedroom on the same corridor as the parents, Julius and Alice.

Next morning I met them all over breakfast.

‘’Good morning Julius, I am George’’, I piped.

‘’Yes, I know’’ he said almost aggressively. He shook hands and avoided eye contact out of disdain not bashfulness. He was a distinctly surly and saturnine sort.

Julius parried my few attempts at conversation.

An average height and slender middle aged woman came along – she wore her hair in a bob and had a worried look about her.

I stood up and shook her hand as I greeted her in Chinese. She was the mother as I had deduced. She spoke minimal English and used her daughter as an interpreter.

There was little chit chat at the table. The father was busily feeding his face and looking away. Occasionally he punctuated the silence with a very loud eructation. I pretended not to notice. The family did not bat an eyelid. What the father was doing was entirely permissible according Chinese table manners. When in Rome do as the Romans do. I wished to avail myself of this. Wouldn’t it be a rare delight just for once to do an ear splittingly loud burp at the table? But I just could not bring myself to.

The mother exhorted me to eat more. I have never been slim. The last thing I needed was encourage to fatten myself up.

Then it was upstairs for lessons in his parents’ bedroom there were desks there. Julius was bright and very hard working. The boy was a very high achiever but that was not surprising bearing in mind that he had had one on one lessons every day of the holidays for years.

‘’You have only been at prep school in the UK for a year. How did you get so good at English?’’ I gushed.

‘’I used to have a teacher here – a Filipino woman. She came here every day for years after I finished my classes at Chinese school’’ he said seriously.

The child had a wide lexis and almost never made a grammatical mistake. He comprehended everything that I said to him and I did not slow down the speed at which I spoke for him. His writing was just as excellent at his spoken English. But his Chinese accent was very pronounced. I tried to work a little on correcting that but he took very badly to me drilling him on the pronunciation of certain sounds.

Julius had large epicanthic folds like his father and he had a dark complexion for someone of his ethnicity. Julius was about average height for a child of his age.

We did English, verbal reasoning, non -verbal reasoning, French, interview practice and Maths. I was woeful at non-verbal reasoning which is all about number patterns and the rotation of shapes. These were all multiple choice questions. But what he did not know is that I had the answers in the back of the book. I would check the answers and put a very light almost imperceptible pencil mark below the correct answer. This is who I could tell if he was right of wrong. 9 times out of 10 he was correct.

Sometimes I did lessons with Julius in a nearby building. A short and slim epicene old man came along – he was not wearing a shirt. The man chatted calmly with Julius who clearly knew the man well. The old man was his uncle he explained.

In break Julius and I played chess. He was a formidable player. He took the game extremely seriously. I invoked the Corinthian spirit at first and let him win. But once I realized how fantastic he was at the game I decided to give him a run for his money. I played my very hardest. But he still beat me! We played roughly forty times and I won twice. We had two draws.

When he was losing he took it very poorly indeed. He would slam his chess piece down so hard that the others would fall off. He was ferociously competitive. I began to comprehend why he was so diligent about his studies. He approached every lesson with a sense of mission.

I should have been the one sulking. I was an adult being thrashed at chess by a 10 year old. It is a Maths game and I am woeful at maths.

‘’You are outstanding at chess’’, I complimented him.

‘’Yes, I know. I had a lot of chess coaching.’’

I would do a few hours of tutoring with Julius up until luncheon. At luncheon the mother would stand by the table and look on anxiously with her hands clasped together again urge me to eat more. It was mostly rice and other stodgy food. Surprisingly they were all a healthy weight.

In the afternoon Julius did the Chinese Language and maths (in Chinese) with another tutor. Then his music teacher would come and teach him the piano.

On one occasion Julius said, ‘’I am going to walk my dog.’’

But there was no canid there. He explained it was a virtual dog on a computer game. How pathetic is that?

After a few days I was aware of a slight medical problem. I had to vouchsafe this to the family despite it being embarrassing. I stated that I needed to go to the lavatory too frequently. Alice said she would buy me something from the pharmacy. Quite unembarrassedly she asked me the necessary question, ‘’is it pee pee or poo poo?’’

I answered that it was the former. Whatever the pharmacy gave me worked.

In my free time I walked around the compound. There were about 50 buildings there. There was even a small shop selling a few comestibles and domestic items.

There was a barrier gate. I was able to walk in and out. The guards recognized me. I was the only white there. I walked up and down the busy street and to the park. I walked to the bridge that spanned the huge river that divided the city into two.

In a shop on the city street I saw a white middle aged woman. She was tallish, slender and had dark blonde hair and spoke to her teenaged son. I overheard that it was Russian. We were not so far from the border.

I discussed Manchuria with Julius. It turns out that he was Manchu on his mother’s side. But his mother could not speak the language.

Alice told me that the mother had worked for the intelligence services long ago. They had caught many spies in the Dalian Peninsula because it is close to Japan.

In preparing the boy for his Eton interview I thought it apt that he should know something about the history of the school. Therefore I told him about King Henry VI. I consider myself a history buff. But what I had not known was that he ran away to Scotland for a few years.

We ran through the mock interview several times. Then we reversed roles. I showed him how not to do it. I would act painfully timid. Sometimes I would be brash and dismissive. Sometimes I would come across as insufferably conceited and full of braggadocio.

The internet did not always work. This was a time for me to pen stories. When the internet worked I treated myself to listening to pieces by Hungarian composers.

I read translations of classical Chinese tales – they were translated by a Jewish-American named Shapiro. He had spent time in China in the mid- 20^th century and become the interpreter of Chairman Mao Zedong. He was very different from Ben Shapiro whose surname he shares.

One sunny summer’s evening I was told that after lessons I would go with the boy to the university where he sometimes played tennis. The driver took us in their Rolls Royce. They are incredibly spacious and comfortable cars and such a smooth ride. I scarcely felt that we were moving. Even the aroma inside them is a pleasure.

The land around the city was very flat. The level fields stretched to the skyline. Here and there a few low rise buildings squatted.

We drove past the security gate into the university. Some young black men played football on a pitch by the gate. Julius explained there were some African students at his dad’s university and they stayed over the summer.

The campus was all but deserted. There were numerous low rise buildings: halls of residence and lecture halls. The buildings were all modern, nondescript and bland as can be. The place was all about instrumental rationality – there was no character of beauty to it. We came to some tennis courts in the middle of the campus.

A police car came and delivered a supermarket trolley full of tennis balls. There were a few police officers who idled around near the tennis court. They watched the courts but not intensely.

There were two tennis coaches. I sat on a bench as they put the boy through his paces in terms of tennis drills. It was all in Mandarin of course so I could not comprehend a word of what was being said. The two men coaching him were both aged about 40 and were lithe and svelte

The Chinese Flag snapped at the flagstaff in the slight breeze. The light grew crepuscular. Then I heard the Chinese National Anthem blare out from a speaker. They stopped the tennis practice and stood to attention as did the police. I knew it was only mannerly to emulate them. One of the police officers lowered the flag with great ceremony. Dusk was drawing on.

The tennis practice resumed once the flag had been lowered.

Once we went into a gigantic gym building. There was a row of full size tennis courts. They played on those.

Sometimes after a sweaty game of tennis Julius and the family would go straight to a very smart restaurant without showering or changing. I did not understand it. Ladies would be there tastefully madeup with their hair just styled and sporting their most glamorous evening dresses.

After a few evenings of pointlessly accompanying him to tennis I sat watching them on a bench. The coach said out of nowhere, ‘’your tutor will play with you now.’’ This had to be translated by Julius of course.

I was nonplussed. I had not played tennis in over 20 years. I was always terrible at the sport. But I took up the racket with gusto and was determined to give a good account of myself.

I ran around the court hitting the ball back to him. He did not find it too easy to get the better of me. But then I was more than a foot taller than him.

This minuet went on for a good ten minutes. When suddenly I felt a very sharp pain in my right calf. Had someone thrown a metal ball at it? I cried out in pain. I could not put any weight on that leg. I hopped over to the bench and sat down.

They came over to me and asked what happened?

‘’I pulled a muscle I think’’ I said wincing.

Eventually I hopped over to the car. I began to worry that this might take out my other leg as too much weight was going on the left leg.

I realized later the thing to do was to lie down on my back on the ground and put the affected leg in the air or balance the ankle on the bench. That would minimize blood flow to the affected muscle.

We drove home. As long as no weight was on that muscle I was not in pain.

With great difficulty I made it into the house and up the stairs.

I had to crawl to the loo and the shower. I made it up and down stairs in pain by sitting and shuffling my buttocks from one step to the next.

This was not a serious injury and there was no question of going to the doctor. But it put paid to any idea of going to Beijing on my day off. There was a palace to see in Shenyang.  I was unable to do that.

Later there was talk of going swimming with him.

‘’My mother thinks you will drown’’ said the child.

The family thought I did not give enough attention to the boy. We were due to fly back together in early September. I would miss my birthday in London.

As the family was dissatisfied with me they ended it a little early. I did not care at all.

My leg had partly recovered by the time I left. But that muscle still hurts from time to time.

I just made the connection in Shanghai.

The flight to London. I was plied with red wine. The air steward recharged my glass unbidden. I slept soundly.

I made it to London but my suitcase did not. It was delivered a week later.

I managed to have a birthday knees up after all.

My time in China was disenjoyable.

Neil Hamilton

His own man?

Showman?

Questions for cash?

The greatest prime minister we never had.

National treasure

Hero

Saviour

Genius of Brexit

Neil Hamilton is one of the most famous or perhaps infamous ex-MPs of modern times. Though he was a passionate parliamentarian it is a curious twist of fate that he had achieved far greater sway once he lost his seat. Barrister, university lecturer, journalist, campaigner, MP, Assembly Member, teacher, quiz show contestant, talk show guest, actor, interviewer, controversialist, contarian, transvestite, bon vivant, author, media factotum extraordinaire and all round national treasure – Neil is truly one of a kind. Ebullient, amiable, affable, gallant, garrulous, telegenic, bankrupt, bankable, intelligent, elegant, avaricious, dapper, debonair, sanguine, bonhomous, irrepressible, innovative, opinionated, outspoken, unbreakable, querulous, quixotic, resilient, unflappable, enervating, disputatious, shameless, faithful, always immaculately attired and seldom captious – Neil is a man of many parts. I have long been adazzle by his gifts and his chequered story. How can one possibly do justice to such a multitalented man whose life has had such triumphs and such travails? There has scarcely be a dull moment.

Notwithstanding being brutalized by the left wing gutter press for years, Neil never once lost his composure. He defied the insults and rose above them. He never resorts to vulgarities. Throughout his travails, ever bore himself with a dignity that it would profit others to study.

Given the slings and arrows of outrageous reportage that Neil suffered it is inexplicable that he never resorted to contumely or Anglo-Saxonisms. He is a man not given to wild emotion.

A man of prodigious gifts and endless energy yet he never achieved the high ministerial office to which he aspired. He was too incautious, farouche and perhaps unembarrassable for his own good. As one ex-Tory MP said to me of Neil, ‘’he had no sense of danger’’. Neil is certainly no Westminster cardboard cut-out.

For 20 years Neil was one of Britain’s most colourful and instantly recognizable characters. That is all the more surprising given that he is undemonstrative. He is not visually arresting. Neither unusually tall nor short – Neil is not obese nor skinny. His dress sense is a little old fashioned. Yet somehow he garnered endless media attention – much of it unsought and even unwanted.

Tatton was the constituency that Neil graced with his presence from 1983 to 1997. It would be fair to say that he is not universally adored in his former Cheshire stomping ground. He later brought levity and controversy to the once staid National Assembly for Wales. He now enjoys an uncharacteristically quiet retirement in rural Wiltshire

Neil’s political career was dogged by allegations of cash for questions that refused to go away. He made some powerful enemies. A meretricious Egyptian billionaire Mohammed Fayed was a deadly foe of his. The Guardian newspaper was hellbent on bringing Neil down. Most of Fleet Street was extremely hostile to Neil in the 1990s. A lesser man would have cracked under the strain. Seeing vicious headlines about his splashed across the front pages of several newspaper day after day was more than enough to destroy the average person. But Neil is so much more than a mere normal man.

The 1997 election was a seismic shift from Conservative to Labour. But during Labour’s landslide election one seat attracted more media coverage than any other. That was Tatton where Neil stood and lost.

There was a time in the late 90s and early Noughties when Neil Hamilton was a household name. You could not turn on your telly without seeing Neil and Christine.

Background

Mostyn Neil Hamilton was born on 9 March 1949 in the United Kingdom. He has always been known by his middle name: Neil. Mostyn is a place in Wales and perhaps significantly this name is de-emphasised like Neil’s Welsh heritage.

It was in 4 Trelyn, Lane, Fleur de-Lis that Neil was born. The house was that of Neil’s paternal aunt. Fleur de-Lis that boasts being Neil’s birthplace. It is in the district of Bedwellty in Monmouthshire. It is not far from the small town of Blackwood. Monmouthshire a county that has passed back and forth between Wales and England. It is the most anglicized part of Wales. The illegitimate son of Charles II was styled the Duke of Monmouth: he of the ill-fated 1685 Rebellion. But apart from that Monmouth and Monmouthshire are names one seldom hears.

Some doubted that Monmouth is Welsh at all. The Welsh Guards once advertised for recruits saying they must be from Wales or Monmouthshire impliedly saying that Monmouthshire is not in Wales. When Neil was eleven they moved to Ammanford, Carmarthen. Neil never particularly stressed his Welsh identity. He was always a committed unionist.

Bedwellty has now been assigned to the County of Gwent.

Neil was born is very close to Abertillery: a rock solid Labour constituency that he was to contest 15 years later. His birthplace is also close to other places that are legendary for their socialist fervor: Islwyn and Ebbw Vale. The latter being the seat of Welsh Labour’s most famous son Nye Bevan and later the seat of the sometime leader of the Labour Party: Michael Foot. Bedwellty became part of the Islwyn constituency that was later represented by Neil Kinnock who was leader the Labour Party from 1983-92. Kinnock was known as the Welsh windbag for his verbose and tedious oratory. He and Neil Hamilton were not in sympathy. When Kinnock was sent upstairs to the House of Lords he styled himself Baron Kinnock of Bedwellty.

The appeal of Labour to those in coalmining communities is not hard to understand. Before Labour was founded as the Labour Representation Committee in 1894 conditions for most people in South Wales were grim indeed. It was one of the most poverty-stricken regions of the United Kingdom. Most people left school at 12. Men toiled for decades in horrific conditions underground for poverty pay. Coal mining was extraordinarily dangerous. Shafts collapsed and sometimes there were gas explosions. Dozens were killed every years and many were injured. Many of the injured could not afford treatment. There was no disability benefit. Workhouses still existed. The aristocrats who owned the coalmines were filthy rich despite not doing a day’s work. It all seemed grossly unjust. Labour promised to make life better for the great majority of people who were poor. There was an awful lot of avoidable suffering and Labour wanted to alleviate this. The Conservatives and Liberals offered no such solutions. Their MPs were mostly upper class or middle class. By contrast Labour MPs of that generation were usually identifiably working class. By the time Neil was born Labour was building the welfare state. It had made life significantly better for the majority of people. Back then 65% of people called themselves working class. Class identity was strong. People aligned behind political parties often on a class basis.

Disraeli’s dictum is that the Church of England is the Tory Party at prayer. This was never accurate but there was a grain of truth to it. Note that for centuries the Anglican Church in Wales was known as the Church of England. This irked many as disrespectful to Wales.  It is now called the Church in Wales not the Church of Wales. By the time of Neil’s birth most Welsh people were Nonconformists of some stripe or other: Baptists, Presbyterians, Methodists, Congregationalists or even like David Lloyd George – Disciples of Christ. Very few working class Welsh people were Church of England. Being an active Nonconformist correlated with voting for Labour, the Liberals or even Plaid Cymru (the Party of Wales). The Church of England was said by Disraeli to be the Tory Party at prayer. This was inaccurate but contained a grain of truth.

The Hamilton’s lived in Wales where coalmining was the main industry. Neil’s father was the chief engineer for a mining company. Both his grandfathers had been down the mines. Though conditions in the pits were often ghastly it was relative handsomely remunerated. It was danger money.

The surname Hamilton relates to a town in the Scots Lowlands: Hamilton. There is indeed a Duke of Hamilton. There is a surname ‘Hamill’ as well.

The Britain that Neil grew up in was very different from today. In 1949 under 1% of the population was non-white. In Wales it was more like 0.1% and in Carmarthen even less than that. Back then being Irish was considered to be ethnically diverse. Most people had never eaten rice other than in rice pudding. Indian and Chinese restaurants were all but unknown. The Second World War was still a very recent memory. Almost all items were still rationed. The British Empire was extant and was assumed to have long way yet to run. There was National Service. This meant that young men had to do two years in the army, Royal Navy, Royal Marines or RAF. There were exemptions for conscientious objectors, the disabled, parliamentary candidates and doctors. Doctors could perform their service by providing medical care in the colonies. Before the Suez Crisis of 1956, the British Empire was assumed to have a long way yet to run. Men only a few years older than Neil did National Service but it was phased out in 1963 so Neil did not have to do it.

Labour had won a sweeping victory in 1945. Labour’s Attorney-general Sir Hartley Shawcross said, ‘’we are the masters now and not just for now but for a very long time to come.’’ It was widely forecast that the Conservatives would be out of office for a generation. It was to general astonishment that the Tories won office again in 1951. That was only by fluke since Labour won more votes but the vagaries of the first past the post system awarded more seats to the Conservative and Unionist Party.

In Neil’s childhood the Cold War was at its height. Capitalism was seriously questioned. There was thought to be a strong chance that communism would triumph.

The 1950s was a time of austerity at first. The United Kingdom was decidedly bland compared to today. It was only just recovering from the war. But rationing was being phased out the UK entered a sustained economic boom. Unemployment was very low, inflation was low and consumer goods were becoming ever more affordable. Strikes almost never occurred. Cars and televisions came within reach for the middle class. The working class had disposable incomes like never before. To people who remembered the Great Depression and the Second World War, the 1950s seemed splendid. The Prime Minister Harold Macmillan told people ‘’you’ve never had it so good.’’ Supermac was right. Yet relative poverty still existed. Foreign holidays were the preserve of the few, nay, the very few. Most Britons had never been on a plane. The remotest villages still did not have electricity in the 1950s. Most people still kept their houses warm in winter with coal and logs crackling on the hearth. Central heating was not the norm until the 1960s.

Despite the economy growing, 1950s Britain was monochromatic compared to today. Many Britishers thought that there was a better life to be had in sunnier climes. They had the automatic right to immigrate to Commonwealth countries such as Australia and South Africa. There was even the assisted passage scheme. The UK Government even sent orphans to Australia. Why was Britain trying to get rid of its people as it brought in people from the ‘New Commonwealth’ of Jamaica, Trinidad, Grenada, India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Tanzania and Kenya? The Commonwealth was very much the frame of reference. Few Britons thought of themselves as being European.

Unemployment was so low in fact that there was a paucity of workers in some regions and in certain sectors of the economy. This caused the Conservative Government to invite immigration from the Commonwealth and indeed colonies which back then still existed. Her Majesty’s Government specifically asked people from Caribbean countries and South Asia to move to the United Kingdom to work. One of those Conservative cabinet ministers who invited doctors and nurses from the West Indies to come and work in the UK was a certain John Enoch Powell!

Neil had grandparents living in Portsmouth.

Neil grew up in one of the most overwhelmingly pro-Labour areas of the UK. Neil was a born dissident. He loathed the idea that the state would control everything. Growing up in a small town run by a smug, corrupt and self-serving Labour council he saw the Conservatives as representing liberty. At the age of 15 Neil joined the Conservative and Unionist Party. It was a highly unusual move. It proves he is broadminded and even has moral courage. Labour had just come into office under Harold Wilson as Prime Minister. But was already a convinced anti-socialist. Neil has always been notable for his utter fealty to the House of Windsor.

Although Neil is Welsh he was brought up in an Anglophone family. He later learnt some Welsh though as he says himself he can only make ‘’a fair stab’’ at speaking the language. When he was at school Welsh was hardly ever taught. His education was conducted exclusively through the medium of English.

Something of Neil’s character may have come from him growing up middle class in a very working class town. His family was much better off than many of their neighbours. He regularly went to England to visit relatives. This emphasized in him the oneness of the United Kingdom. Therefore his Conservatism and his Unionism were not swimming against the tide quite as much as one may have imagined.

Growing up in a small town can induce the small town mentality. But it can also do the opposite. Neil is not timid and embraces cosmopolitanism.

As soon as Neil opened his mouth it was plain that he was given to ‘yappin’ to use the Cymro-English colloquialism. He was to make his life by talking.

At school Neil did well academically. However, he was no sportsman. His eccentricities did not make him popular. He was unafraid and paid a price for his outspokenness.  Despite attending a state school he did not acquire a Welsh accent but spoke Received Pronunciation. The only state educated Welshman who speaks with that accent from Neil’s generation is a Swansea grammar school boy – Michael Howard. Lord Howard was a Tory Home Secretary and later Leader of Her Majesty’s Most Loyal Opposition.

Neil passed his 11+. In those days children sat this exam in English and Maths. The top 20% went to grammar school and had some chance of going to university. In a grammar school pupils were taught subjects such as the sciences, ancient languages, modern languages and humanities subjects. They would sit Ordinary levels (O levels). They were the equivalent of GCSEs but were harder than ‘A’ levels are now. Then pupils could sit A levels aged 18. A levels were extremely challenging. Even a D grade was hard to get.

In 1963 only 4% of people went to university. But universities were expanding rapidly in the 1960s.

Those who did not pass the 11+ (80% of the population) went to a secondary modern where they would do some English and Maths and learn trades like woodwork, metalwork, sewing, cookery and suchlike before leaving school aged 16. Most people in the 1960s left school without any qualifications at all. There were plenty of jobs that did not require qualifications such as being a factory worker, farm labourer, navvy, janitor, joiner, shipbuilder, construction worker, miner, cleaner, shop assistant and so on. The UK still had a lot of mines, factories and shipyards in those days.

Though Wales was made about rugby, Neil was no rugger bugger. Nor indeed was he great shakes at any sport. He was often found with his nose in a book.

Amman Valley Grammar School was there Neil was educated. He did his O levels and A levels there.

University

University College Wales, Aberystwyth had the inestimable honour of educating Neil Hamilton. He is surely Aberystwyth’s most illustrious graduate. There he read economics and politics.

Many undergraduates professed the cloying and stultifying socialism of the Welsh section of the Labour Party. There were also blood red commies. Some of them adulated the most prolific mass murderers of all time such as Mao Zedong and Stalin. It was all in the name of compassion of course. For some leftists these communist tyrants were messianic.

The 1960s was a time of change. 60s teenagers were ‘’children of the revolution’’ as the song said. It was the era of the counterculture, the sexual revolution, flower power, hippies and the anti-war movement. Some couples started to live together before marriage. Unwed pregnancy was no longer quite as scandalous as it had been a decade earlier. Times they were a-changing, as Bob Dylan sang. But even then the counterculture was perhaps as not strongly felt in rural Wales as it was in Swinging London. Through all this upheaval Neil made a name for himself as a young fogey. Some young men grew their hair down to their shoulders and wore shaggy beards but Neil was always short back and sides and was always clean-shaven. He has always been delightfully contra mundum.

Neil was a baby boomer. Those born in the late 1940s are said to be a very optimistic generation. That is because from their birth life got better and better for decades. It was only when such people neared the age of 30 that the Western World started to encounter serious problems and stagnation.

By the 1960s the UK had emerged from the shadow of the Second World War. It appeared to be a time of rampant consumerism. Car ownership quadrupled in the decade. Items that had once been the preserve of only the middle class had become affordable for working class people – telephones and televisions.

The Vietnam Conflict war raging. The Cold War as at its height. There was an ideological clash in Britain too between left and right. Labour was officially on the side of the Free World in the Cold War. But there was a significant faction within Labour that did not support the Free World and felt more than a little sympathy for communist tyrannies. Many communists had joined the Labour Party. They were Trotskyites, Stalinists and Maoists. These comrades thought that the free market was evil, capitalism must be smashed and the Cold War was the West’s fault. Labour was forever enfeebling Her Majesty’s Armed Forces.

The prospect of nuclear war hung over the world like a sword of Damocles. The Cuban Missile Crisis had been but a few years before in 1963. The Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament organized ban the bomb marches. Quite a few Labour Party members wanted the United Kingdom to engage in unilateral nuclear disarmament and leave the UK vulnerable to a nuclear Holocaust without any means to defend itself.

Perhaps the defining characteristic of late 1960s radicalism was its vandalism. It wanted to tear down. Radical enmity towards Western civilization was all the more shocking because of the totalitarians that it looked to. Such nihilism horrified even Labour moderates.

When Neil went up to university there was a Labour Government. A short, soft-spoken, pensive, podgy, pipe-smoking Yorkshireman named Harold Wilson was Prime Minister. Though Labour had won a landslide majority in 1966 it became deeply unpopular just one year later when the Pound Sterling was severely devalued. The United Kingdom was withdrawing from South Arabia (Yemen). There were sanctions on Rhodesia (Zimbabwe) because of its Unilateral Declaration of Independence. Britain had twice been rejected in its bid to join the European Economic Community. There were protests and rising tensions in Northern Ireland.

The Conservative and Unionist Party was led by the uncharismatic bachelor Edward Heath. Heath’s uptight manner, uninspiring personality, wooden oratory and emotional unintelligence led one Tory image maker to say ‘’we have to try to turn Ted into a human being.’’ It proved to be mission impossible. Edward Heath was square in face and square in personality.

While Neil was at university, in the summer of 1969, Prince Charles was invested as Prince of Wales in a magnificent ceremony in Caernarvon Castle. The Secretary of State for Wales, George Thomas MP, had spoken some of the ceremony in Welsh. Thomas George Thomas went by his middle name ‘George’ but was jocularly known as ‘’Tommy Twice’’. George Thomas was later to go on to be Speaker of the House of Commons and was ennobled as Lord Tonypandy – taking the name of his quondam South Wales constituency that was not far from Neil’s natal place. As Lord Tonypandy was a passionate royalist and a committed euroscpetic he was one of the few Labour politicians whom Neil held in high regard.

The investiture of the Prince of Wales was an occasion for Her Britannic Majesty to come to Wales. That was something that did not happen all that often. In the 1960s celebrity culture was only just starting. The House of Windsor was still unquestioningly exalted by almost everyone in the United Kingdom. The 20 year old Prince Charles was held in high esteem.  All the Welsh notables attended eminent persons from across the Commonwealth of Nations were there.

Her Majesty Queen had dubbed her firstborn son Prince of Wales. There had been no Prince of Wales for decades before that. The investiture simply strengthened Neil’s monarchist convictions. There was a handful of racist Anglophobic ultra-nationalist headbangers in Wales who objected to the prince. They tried to ruin the wonderful day for all decent people. But His Royal Highness Prince Charles went on a five day tour of the Principality and was very rapturously received by his mother’s adoring subjects. It seemed to confirm just how popular the monarchy was.

The same separatist bigots in Wales had been trying to wreck the solemnity of God Save the Queen when it was sung at Cardiff Arms Park before rugby matches by jeering through it. It was grossly insulting to the average Welshman who was a fervent British patriot. Coming so soon after the Second World War it was also spitting on the grave of Welshmen who had valiantly laid down their lives for the United Kingdom. These shameful tantrums by separatists in Wales underscored to Neil how distasteful, small-minded and spiteful separatism is. He has always been a firm unionist.

Some of the separatists in Wales turned violent and called themselves the Free Wales Army (FWA). Fortunately they did not manage to kill a single person.

Neil has always punctured the pretensions of these anti-democratic separatists who professed to speak for Wales.

Back then some youngsters affected grunge. But not Neil. He often wore a smart tweed jacket or blazer even on the weekend and he began sport bowties. It is a confection that never left him. He has always been an aesthete. Who has ever see him dress down?

Neil took a degree in 1970.

He was also a mad monarchist.

He later took an MA in the economics and politics in 1975.

Neil was a well-known member of the Federation of Conservative Students (FCS). He joined in 1968 and left in 1974. He was elected to represent FCS. In this capacity he went to Italy to attend a conference of Movimiento Sociale Italiano (MSI). MSI was largely regarded as a continuation of the Fascist Party. Some joked that MSI stood for Mussolini Sei Immortale (‘’Mussolini you are immortal’’). This error of judgement did not harm Neil’s career overmuch. Conservative abhor fascism as a racist and totalitarian species of socialism. Fascism is about social engineering and the abolition of liberty. It is a creed that is profoundly anti-conservative.

In the 1960s there was a spirited debate surrounding the European Economic Community (EEC). The EEC was the precursor to the European Union (EU). The EEC was often known was the ‘common market’ to make it seem less threatening. Young and hip people tended to be Europhiles. Neil perhaps typically decided to be a Eurosceptic. He was in the Anti-Common Market League (ACML). Many in that organisations believe that the Commonwealth of Nations was still a force in the world. If the United Kingdom acceded to the EEC it would be abandoning the Commonwealth. ACML warned of a European Parliament, British law been subordinate to European law, the European Court of Justice overriding Her Majesty’s courts, the European Commission functioning in effect as a cabinet and the advent of a European single currency. The predictions of the ACML were dismissed as deranged jeremiads. But ACML turned out to be a Cassandra.

Always independent minded and never attune to the zeitgeist, Neil called for large scale privatization. This was very audacious at the height of Butskellism. Butskellism comes from the names of the two post war Chancellors of the Exchequer Richard Austen (‘’Rab’’_ Butler who was a Conservative and Hugh Gaitskell who was a Labour man. Butskellism suggested that there was a consensus – a mélange of socialism and capitalism. The mixed economy appeared to be the Aristotelean mean. Harold Macmillan had argued for this via media since the 1930s and later published a book on it The Middle Way. Few dared question such shibboleths at the time. In a sense Neil was a decade ahead of his party’s thinking. He was a Thatcherite before even Thatcher herself! He had no truck with the flabby compromises of Butskellism. Neil never does anything by half measures.

In the early 1970s France, the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg and West Germany were all more prosperous than the UK. Remember in those days Germany was divided into East and West. The argument ran that these countries were all members of the EEC. If the United Kingdom were to join then it too could share in this. Italy was in the EEC but lagged behind. Denmark and the Republic of Ireland were also in accession talks with Brussels. Could joining the EEC bring the Northern Ireland conflict to an end? As it turns out there was fat chance of that.

In 1973 the United Kingdom joined the European Economic Community. Neil was adamantly against. In 1975 a referendum under the Labour Government of Harold Wilson ratified the British Government’s decision post-factum. Neil then bowed to the will of the people and said that the EEC had achieved his acceptance. Decades later Europhiles were not so democratic when a referendum did not go their way.

The British Conservative Monday Club was very much on the right of the Tory Party.  Its foes – and they were legion – called it racist and far right. The Monday Club had that name because of the Monday in 1961 in which Harold Macmillan had addressed the South African Parliament. Macmillan’s oration in Cape Town was known as the ‘winds of change’ speech. In it he said there was a wind of change blowing through Africa and adjustments needed to be made in view of this. ‘Like it or not the growth of nationalism is a political fact.’ Macmillan’s message was that the white minority in South Africa could no longer keep power to the exclusion of the 80%+ of the populace who were of other races. Macmillan was delivering a message on behalf of the Commonwealth of Nations. The multiracial Commonwealth was growing louder in its denunciations of South Africa’s apartheid system of racial discrimination. Macmillan’s speech had not been cleared in advance with the South African Government. The Prime Minister of South Africa Hendrik Frensch Verwoerd was present in the chamber when Macmillan delivered his address. Verwoerd was called upon to respond. The Dutch-born politician was aghast and professed himself almost speechless and what he considered to be an astoundingly breach of protocol and an unwarranted intrusion into South Africa’s domestic affairs. The Monday Club was founded in opposition to Macmillan’s policy. It argued that majority rule was premature in Rhodesia (now named Zimbabwe) and South Africa. It thought that Tory policy had been generally limp wristed for decades and needed to become far firmer.

The Monday Club said that apartheid should be supported and that the United Kingdom should recognise the illegal white minority regime in Rhodesia as a legitimate government. The Monday Club called for funding for voluntary repatriation of our Commonwealth cousins. It said that non-white British citizens should be offered money to ‘go home.’ In fairness the law provided such funding right up until well into the years of Tony Blair’s administration. Very few ethnic minority Britons took up the offer. The Monday Club was vociferously anti-socialist. It also demanded the annihilation of the IRA. As the majority of people wanted the death penalty to be restored the Monday Club said it was democratic and logical that the supreme sanction be brought back. At best it was Toryism on steroids. Others called it crypto-fascist.

There was much polemic against the Monday Club. People inveighed against it as being an apologist for the white supremacist regime in Pretoria. To be fair, there was a measure of veracity in that accusation.

Neil noted the hypocrisy and emptiness of this self-regarding moralizing about South Africa. Virtually every country in Africa was undemocratic. Yet only one was singled out for a chorus of execration. And that was for manifestly racist reasons. It was because the South African Government was white. People put Nelson Mandela on a pedestal. Who was the Mandela of Zaire or Ethiopia or Chad or Uganda or a host of other slaughterhouse states all across the continent? No political prisoner would last 28 months incarceration in another African country let alone 28 years. This tu quoque argument did not convince many.

Neil contested the chairmanship of FCS but was defeated by David Davis. Davis was then at Warwick University studying Business. He went on to be a prominent Tory leadership contender and cabinet minister.

Seeking gainful employment, Neil found work as a teacher at St John’s College in Southsea in 1973. That was near his grandparents.  While teaching he read for the bar. In 1978 Neil found a new job at Hatfield Polytechnic in Hertfordshire. It is now called the University of Hertfordshire. Neil continued to teach there part-time as a struggling junior barrister. He gave up teaching in July 1982 and concentrated fully on the bar.

At Cambridge, Neil founded the Eldon League. It was named in honour of the notoriously reactionary early 19^th century Lord Chancellor – the Earl of Eldon. Born plain ‘John Scott’, Lord Eldon was the son of a highly successful Newcastle coal merchant. He then matriculated at University College, Oxford. He was a Tory ultra. He said that representative government was the opposite of what the United Kingdom had. Eldon was never happier than when awarding political dissidents 14 years transportation to Australia with penal servitude or indeed sentencing malfeasants to hang. He vigorously defended slavery and said that grand larceny should be punished by death even in the case of children. He is ridiculed in Shelley’s Masque of Anarchy ‘Eldon big ears had on.’ Astonishingly he has statuary honour in his old Oxford college. By a curious coincidence this is also Shelley’s college (University College, Oxford) and he is also honoured with a fine marble statue.

The Eldon League was a decidedly unserious right wing drinking club. They held picnics and garden parties. The Eldonians would spray each other with champagne and engage in suchlike jolly japes. They celebrated such crucial events as the King of Swaziland’s birthday. It attracted a quaint and faintly fruitcake crowd. They published a jocular manifesto demanding that plastic be outlawed and internal combustion engines be abandoned. Insofar as possible the only used train and horse drawn carriages as their conveyances when travelling to and from Eldonian events. It was seen as being against the entire 20^th century. Its member dressed up in anachronistic garb. Neil styled himself by the characteristically antiquated title of Imperial Prior. The Eldon League was a menagerie of eccentrics. But in it, for once, Neil did not seem like an odd fish.

Neil’s atavism was perhaps not quite as unusual as it might seem. In the 1970s a show aired on television called Good Old Days. In the show people went to the theatre togged out in Edwardian clobber. They were treated to pre-First World music hall acts. Some of the elderly theatregoers will have been children in the Edwardian era. In the 1970s Britain was on the skids. The empire had been dissolved. Inflation eroded incomes, there was rising unemployment, rising crime and sinking national self-belief.  The country was palsied by strikes. There had been the three day weeks because coal was in such short supply that for a couple of months workplaces could only be provided with three days’ worth of electricity each week. There seemed to be no end to the cycle of stagnation and turmoil. The Ulster Conflict was raging with no end in sight. In Caledonia and in Cymru separatist sentiment had metastisised. Entry into the EEC had been deeply divisive.  The United Kingdom was the sick man of Europe. It seemed apt that Britain treat itself to one last dose of nostalgia for its zenith.

Whilst he was an undergraduate Neil was an active Conservative. At a young Conservative conference he met a lady of his age named Christine Holman. Miss Holman was a doctor’s daughter who was then studying sociology at the University of York. A romance blossomed. They have been inseparable ever since. Their motto is – we do things together.

Unlike Neil, Christine had grown up in one of the most fiercely Conservative places in the realm: rural Hampshire. She was a doctor’s daughter and spoke RP as one might expect someone to do who belonged to the southern English upper middle class.

While at York, Christine made some friends for life. They were Harvey Proctor and Michael Brown – about whom more later.

Christine worked as a secretary for a number of Conservative MPs. For a while she worked for Sir Gerald Nabarro. He was known for extravagant handlebar moustache and his stentorian voice with which he boomed out his outrageously racist beliefs: ‘’how would you like your daughter to marry a big buck n****** with the prospect of coffee coloured grandchildren?’’  Standing 6’4’’ and well-built, Nabarro was a former army physical fitness instructor and was unfailingly perfectly turned out in tailor made Saville Row suits. He had the most extraordinary presence. Sir Gerald and had become a self-made millionaire as a timber merchant. Gerald Nabarro’s voice was said to have been the loudest in the British army. And that’s really saying something! His saloon bar prejudices did his political career a power of good in the West Midlands.  That was Enoch Powell country. He love the monarchy and despised undergraduates. The permissive society was a particular bugbear of his.

Gerald Nabbaro was once had up in court on suspicion of dangerous driving. He was acquitted on the basis that it was not him but his secretary who was driving. Nabarro’s revolting racialism did not add lustre to the Tory diadem. In mitigation one might plead that he was a man of his era. Such rebarbative views were not uncommon in the 1960s. Moreover, the Latin word for black was more of a conversational word than a racial slur at the time.

Nabarro’s racist screeds are perhaps even more surprising considering that he belonged to a much persecuted ethnic minority himself. He was Jewish. But that Christine chose to work for him out of all the Conservative MPs shows poor judgement on her part. Was it not at the very least ethically suboptimal to work for a man who expectorated such detestable racial invective? How did his racist outbursts make the beleaguered black community feel? How did his loathing of mixed race children make them feel? Surely his racist diatribe aggravated racial animus, playground bullying and even heavy violence against non-white people in the United Kingdom.

In 1974 Neil was selected as a Prospective Conservative Parliamentary Candidate. He stood in Abertillery. This seat was in the mining area of South Wales. Of the 650 odd seats in the United Kingdom this was Labour’s safest. The result may be guessed. It was a dry run for a marginal seat next time.

Upon graduation Neil taught history for a while. He then decided that he wished to be called to the bar.

Neil went up to Cambridge to read law. Is college was Corpus Christi. As he already had a degree he was able to take a truncated programme. He did the two year course and received and LL.M. Even Neil’s worst enemy does not doubt his intellect.

While at Cambridge, Neil was active in the Cambridge Union. That is the debating society of Cambridge University.

In 1977 Neil was at the Tory Conference when it was addressed by a 16 year old Yorkshire schoolboy named William Hague. Ambitious young Tories were chanting ‘’bastard, bastard’’ because they were emerald with envy. What a flying start this boy had. Who could ever compete with that – addressing the conference aged only 16! Hague was to go on to be leader of the party and Foreign Secretary.

After 1976 the United Kingdom was led – or rather misled – by a Labour Prime Minister named James Callaghan. ‘Sunny Jim’ as his few fans called him was an amiable and ineffectual figure presiding over what one newspaper called ‘mounting chaos.’ There was strike after strike and seemingly endless inflation. James Callaghan came across as a kindly but pathetic grandfather. The public was thoroughly fed up after the Winter of Discontent – the strikes in late 1978 into early 1979. Notoriously as the gravediggers’ union took ‘industrial action’ for several weeks we could not even bury the dead.

As a wag noted, Callaghan was an Englishman with an Irish name who sat for a Welsh seat. Neil Hamilton is a Welshman with a Scottish name who sat for an English seat.

In 1979 Neil was selected as the Conservative candidate for Bradford North. It was a Labour seat but a marginal one. Bradford did not have a large Pakistani community at the time. British-Pakistanis tend heavily towards Labour. As the Labour Government was reviled for its lassitude, incompetence and decrepitude there was a very considerable chance that Neil could win in Bradford North. But in God’s Own County it a significant handicap that he was not a Yorkshireman. Yorkshire folk tend to regard those born outside the white rose county as an inferior breed. As he joked, ‘’I fought Bradford North and Bradford North fought back.’’

Called to the bar in 1979, Neil began his practice desultorily.

When he came down from Cambridge, Neil read for the bar. He was duly called to the bar. He practised in property law and taxation law. It was a lucrative area of practice.

In the 1980s there was some Thatcherite oomph. Inflation was falling. Consumerism was on the rise. The economy was growing at least in southern England – the Tory heartland. In the rest of the UK there was rising unemployment. It was the decade of big hair and small government. In 1982 the United Kingdom defeated Argentine aggression against the Falklands.

In the early 1980s Neil was the European and Parliamentary Director of the Institute of Directors.

In 1982 Argentina launched an illegal and unprovoked invasion of the Falkland Islands. That was despite almost everyone in the Crown Dependency wishing to remain British. Her Majesty’s Armed Forces duly liberated them. Neil was strongly of the belief that it was right to fight for freedom. He cannot be called a chauvinist or militarist. Some left wingers such as Tam Dalzell said that the Falklanders should be handed over to the fascist junta.

On 12 March 1983 Neil got some very good news. He was adopted as the prospective parliamentary candidate for Tatton. It was one of the safest Conservative constituencies in the realm. Neil’s luck was redoubled when two months later there was an early election.

Christine was the secretary of Michael Grylls MP for Chertsey at the time. You can guess which party he was in!

Into politics

Neil was always sartorially retro. Dressing as though he were born two generations earlier perhaps expressed a yearning for Britain’s imperial zenith. He never quite coincided with people of his age and region. Neil liked to wear three piece suits and had a taste for tweed. He often sported millinery long after it was fashionable.

In 1983 Tatton became vacant. This was a rock solid Conservative constituency in Cheshire. Neil had himself selected. His predecessor as the Tory MP was a most distinguished financial journalist. Tatton was a seat that seemed to be impossible to lose. The seat had previously been called Knutsford after another large town within its bounds. It has been in Conservative hands for decades.

In those days a Tory candidate other 30 without a wife would be looked askance at. If a man over the age of 30 had not taken to wife was he a womanizer? Or even worse, was he what they would then have called ‘queer’? 95% of Tory MPs being male back then and same sex marriage was not thought of. Neil was able to assure Tatton Tories that he was affianced to a young lady of the most unimpeachable Conservative credentials. She had been secretary to the most ferociously right wing Member of the Commons: Sir Gerald Nabarro.

Neil was so confident of winning Tatton that five days before polling day he found time to get married to Mary Christine Holman. Like Neil, Christine is always known by her middle name. The couple married in Cornwall. The happy couple was joined in holy matrimony by the Reverend Father David Johnson. Neil had known David when they were up at Cambridge together. David had been President of the Cambridge Union Society. Johnson was an overdressed, acerbic, vertically challenged, foul mouthed, alcoholic of pronounced racist views and homosexual habits. Fr. Johnson had known Neil at Cambridge. The couple chose not to have children.

Neil was enamoured of the Prime Minister. To him Mrs. Thatcher was Gloriana. He never once criticized her.

1983 was a bumper year for the Conservative Party. With Maggie Thatcher as Prime Minister and Britain buoyed up after victory in the Falklands and Labour in hoc to the loony left the outcome was a foregone conclusion. Neil romped home in Tatton. Finally his childhood dream was realized. It must have made for quite a honeymoon!

Neil and Christine bought a house in Tatton to show their commitment to the seat. Neil had to show his face at every bun fight in the constituency: village fetes, Christmas carol services, Remembrance Day wreath laying and suchlike.

No sooner had Neil’s political career begun than he nearly ended it. It was a pattern of unwisdom that we was due to repeat. Neil went on a controversial visit to Berlin in 1983. Thay was just a few months after he was elected to Parliament. Some schoolboy high jinks occurred. That is putting the kindest possible interpretation on it. Some said that japes might be excusable in an adolescent but in a politician they were unforgivable.

Later a TV documentary was broadcast in 1984 entitled Maggie’s Militant Tendency on a programme called Panorama. It focused on Neil’s contentious visit to what was then West Germany. The programme also revealed Neil’s address to the MSI in 1972. It described his time in the Eldon League and the Monday Club. The programme documented his friendship with George Kennedy Young. Kennedy Young was once Director of Britain’s external intelligence agency: MI6. Some viewed him as far right. He was Chair of the Society for Individual Freedom – a strange position for a spy.

It said that there were some Conservative MPs who were Nazis. It was a leftist media plot to smear the party and pretend that the Tories were infiltrated by anti-democratic elements in the same way that Labour was. The programme alleged that Neil Hamilton had given a straight arm salute in Berlin while fooling around in 1983. Neil was on the trip with Gerald Howarth MP and an activist named Philip Pedley. Pedley had once been Chair of the National Young Conservatives. Neil said his reputation had been besmirched by the BBC. Socialist scribblers on Fleet Street took up the story. They were very delighted to traduce Conservative MPs.

Neil later wrote about the programme, ‘’It was an extremely damaging libel and I was extremely concerned about its impact on my career.’’ That is unsurprising. Perhaps this is when his black hair turned grey.

To some Tories, the BBC programme appeared to confirm their worst suspicions about Auntie. Even a moderate Tory like Chris Patten said that BBC stood for the Bolshevik Broadcasting Corporation. Conservatives were convinced that there was a pinko-liberal infestation in the BBC. At the time of Suez, Sir Anthony Eden said that commies at the BBC had tried to mess up his broadcast by shining lights in his eyes as he spoke live on air.

The MPs who were defamed chose to take legal action. Their libel action succeeded and they were paid damages. Neil subsequently stated that he had made a Nazi salute whilst raising his left fingers to his upper lip to represent a Hitler moustache when he was in Germany merely to ridicule National Socialism. He was cognizant that this constituted an offence under the laws of the Federal Republic of Germany. The imputation that his gesture was expressive of Nazism was preposterous. Neil is certainly no fan of Hitler. Hitler was an anti-smoker and Neil is an indefatigable advocate of smokers’ rights. Tarnishing his reputation as a Nazi was egregiously low and dishonest even by the standards of the BBC.

The libel action was bankrolled by Sir James Goldsmith. Goldsmith was the father of Lord Zac the Conservative politician. In the 1980s Sir James was a stalwart Conservative. He was a self-made billionaire though he had not been born poor:  Sir James was an Old Etonian and his father was a well to do Franco-British hotelier. He recognized in Neil a man of prodigious talent and the uttermost probity. That was why he happily contributed to the fund to clear Neil’s name.

The Spectator columnist Taki also funded Neil’s libel action. Taki Theodorcopalous is an American-educated Greek shipping millionaire of pronounced right wing proclivities. Taki had some fellow feeling of those in legal trouble. In the 1980s he served a few months in prison for accidentally bringing a small quantity of cocaine with him into Heathrow Airport. That could happen to anyone!

David Davis was then a director of the sugar company Tate and Lyle. Incidentally that was where Davis got to know an ex- Scots Guards officer named Iain Duncan Smith who later became an ill-starred leader of the Conservative Party and then a cabinet minister. Davis was a rival of Neil’s in Conservative politics from the 1970s. Nonetheless, Davis and Neil had a good rapport. Davis managed to convince his company to donate to the claimant’s fund. Thus Tate and Lyle became another funder of Neil’s defamation action.

Lord Harris of High Cross also donated around GBP 100 000 to fund Neil’s libel action.

Neil said in his libel case that he was like a Mike Yarwood figure in FCS. Yarwood was then very well known for his impersonations. Neil has a gift for mimicry and often took off politicians and well-known actors. He was known for his impersonations of Enoch Powell, General de Gaulle, Edward Heath, Harold Wilson and the actor Frankie Howerd.  Neil cheerily recalled that he had appeared in blackface in 1982 to ridicule the Ugandan tyrant Idi Amin. He had even dressed up in clericals while doing an impersonation of Canon James own while sailing down the Cam in Cambridge. Neil said he had plenty of respectable character witnesses but chief among them would be Norman St John Stevas. St John Stevas was then a Tory MP and he was the only ever person to be President of both the Cambridge Union and the Oxford Union. St John Stevas was gay but whilst an MP he did not feel able to come out. Had he done so it would probably have been terminal for his career.

The Sunday Times offered Neil a chance to give his side of the story. He said that when he gave the sieg heil salute he was simply engaging in a bit of tomfoolery. He noted that Julian Lewis was there and Lewis is Jewish and indeed several of his relatives were killed in the Holocaust. Lewis recognized what Neil was doing was harmless buffoonery.

The liberal action against the BBC went to trial. Neil was due to be cross-examined by the BBC’s counsel. However, on 21 October 1986 the Director-General of the BBC, Alasdair Milne, decided that the BBC would give in. Milne explained that the Governors of the BBC had ordered him to do so. The BBC paid the legal costs of the claimants which amounted to hundreds of thousands of Pounds. The BBC also paid Neil Hamilton and Gerald Howarth GBP 20 000 apiece. Howarth was the MP for Aldershot at the time. That sum was more than an MP’s annual salary at the time. On 27 October 1985 the BBC broadcast another edition of Panorama in which the show apologized unstintingly for the false statements it had made traducing the two men.

Some said that the BBC had had its arm twisted by politicians and that witnesses had been threatened. The BBC Board of Governors had wanted the case settled and told the BBC Board of Management to do just that. Many in the BBC doubted the wisdom of caving in. The BBC’s barristers had not had an opportunity to even begin their defence in court when the BBC surrendered.

The National Young Conservatives (NYC) suggested that there had been some behind the scenes pressure. The Chairman of NYC Richard Fuller said it was very odd that the BBC had capitulated as the trial was proceeding pleasingly for them.

Malcolm McAlpine had access to the BBC Governors. Some speculated that he had a hand in the BBC’s curious decision. Malcolm McAlpine was a cousin of Lord Alistair McAlpine. Lord McAlpine was a multimillionaire and treasurer of the Conservative Party. He was a doyen of the right and the Eurosceptic wing of the party. He was therefore a fan of Neil. Indeed in 1992 right wing Tories gathered at Lord McAlpine’s house to celebrate the fact that a Tory wet and Europhile Chris Patten had lost his seat at Bath. The Liberal Democrats had covered Bath with posters saying ‘Let’s flatten Patten’ and they did. The price of failure for Patten was not too bad. He was made Governor-General of Hong Kong and was later elected Chancellor of Oxford University.

Regarding the BBC affair, there were claims that witnesses had been intimidated. There is no suggestion that Neil was involved in this either directly or indirectly. A BBC memorandum said that 17 witnesses had been made to change their testimony. Some of those who were due to testify were Conservatives and were revolted by what they saw at Berlin. Nevertheless, they suddenly claimed not to have seen anything untoward.

Gerald Howarth and Neil Hamilton thought that the case against Philip Pedley would be pursued. Pedley would not accept the BBC’s offer of accord and satisfaction. Pedley also had some wealthy backers to fund his claim. Richard Fuller vowed to come to his aid.

Jeffrey Archer was then the Deputy Chairman of the Tory Party. The millionaire novelist considered it unwise for Pedley to fight on. The Tory Party had settled the matter. It was risky to continue to battle in the courts. If Pedley lost then it would look very bad for the party. Pedley could not afford the libel action on his own. Without Fuller’s financial support he would be obliged to settle the case. Archer told Fuller it was foolhardy to fund Pedley’s case. But Fuller resisted pressure to withdraw his financial support from his friend.

The Labour Party said that Conservative Central Office (CCO) had orchestrated a cover up and used undue influence to sway the BBC. Labour wanted to question the Chairman of the Conservative and Unionist Party about the affair: Norman Tebbit.

A Labour politician named Dale Campbell-Savours said he had evidence in a letter from Pedley to John Selwyn Gummer MP. Gummer was a former Party Chairman and was later a cabinet minister under Major. The letter supposedly showed that Tory Central Office had contacted witnesses to persuade them to alter their testimony to the advantage of the claimant.

Norman Tebbit acknowledged that one witness had contacted Tory Central Office but said this was merely because he wanted advice but that CCO had declined to give any as that might seem unethical. Tebbit said that the socialist Campbell-Savours was misusing parliamentary privilege to make false allegations knowingly which otherwise would have been defamatory. Tebbit walked out of the House of Commons chamber without making a further comment.

On 25 October the newspaper reported more evidence of unethical communications with witnesses. Neil then withdrew his action against Pedley. Pedley said that he would not back down. There were still people calling for a full enquiry.

Norman Tebbit made statements about the case but not in the House of Commons chamber. To mislead the House is a resigning matter. Neil said that Tebbit was refusing to address the House on the issue because Tebbit’s statements were misleading. Neil urged the Party Chairman to speak about the matter on the floor of the House. Not everyone in the party was sympathetic to Neil. Some said he had brought it into disrepute.

The Hogan Memorandum was an internal BBC memo which named witnesses who had altered their stories. The Independent newspaper said that there was a recording of a statement by a Conservative witness to the incident. The witness was worried by CCO’s insistence that the Berlin incident had not occurred. CCO was keen that no one substantiate the allegations against Tory MPs.

Mr. Campbell Savours claimed that the Hogan Memorandum proved that the BBC had been threatened. He sent it to Sir Michael Havers who was the Attorney-General and of course a Tory. Havers is the father of the actor Nigel Havers.

The Labour parliamentarian Campbell-Savours said that CCO had striven to meddle with witnesses. It was alleged that CCO had tried to tone down statements made by David Mitchell. Campbell Savours then sent a transcript to the Attorney-General.

Neil had made several statements in the media about his contested visit to Berlin. Some Conservative Party members were supposedly told by CCO to claim that they had not seen Neil goose stepping. Some of the witnesses had initially made such an accusation but had changed their testimony. The theory goes that there was a whip at their back to do so. They were told that it would be deeply unhelpful to the party if they did not retract their earlier statements and if there were no retraction then their careers in the party would come to a juddering halt.  Neil wrote to the Chairman of the Conservative Party in January 1984 stating that he had not goose stepped or performed Nazi salutes ever anywhere.

Gerald Howarth and Neil Hamilton had brought a libel action against Philip Pedley. They then discontinued the action on the basis that it was exorbitantly expensive, horrifically time consuming and stressful and that this was out of all proportion to the apology that they could possibly obtain from Pedley. On 3 December 1986 Pedley said he would not accept the terms of settlement offered by the claimants. He wanted to case to go to trial.

The judge was Mr. Justice Simon Brown. He ruled that Howarth and Neil were not allowed to claim that Pedley’s statements were libelous and they were ordered to pay his costs.

Mr. Pedley was jubilant. He acted as though it were a vindication and said he retracted not one iota of what he had said. He reiterated his claim that he had never suggested that Howarth and Neil Hamilton were National Socialists but rather that their antics gravely undermined the Conservative Party. As a staunch Conservative he was aghast to see two Tory MPs bringing the party into disrepute with their immature looning. The Young Conservative report dismissed Neil’s behaviour as no more than ‘’eccentricity.’’ Pedley reaffirmed his earlier accusations against the men.

Pedley said that members of the YC Committee had been subjected to poison pen letters and verbal abuse after their names were published in Bulldog which was the newspaper of the Young National Front (a white supremacist party). Pedley claimed that he and others had suffered harassment from private security companies. He was implying that wealthy people had paid for this.

Soon after being elected to Parliament, Neil was made an officer of the backbench committee on trade and industry. The Chairman was a formidable Tory MP named Michael Grylls.

In 1984 there were dozens of coalmines all across the realm. But many of them had exhausted their supply of economically viable coal. Some of them were digging up mud. The UK was importing cheaper coal from Czechoslovakia (a country that is now two). North Sea oil was providing much of the United Kingdom’s energy needs as was imported oil and nuclear energy. The government decided to close down uneconomic coal pits and let the others prosper. Leftists believe that coal mines without any coal should remain open. All miners were public sector employees and therefore paid by the taxpayer. Left wingers argued that the poorest people should pay relatively well-paid miners to dig up mud. Every penny wasted on this was a penny robbed from the NHS and other urgent matters.

In 1984 the Miners’ Strike began. The National Union of Mineworkers’ (NUM) leader was Arthur Scargill. Scargill had been a member of the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) when Stalin was the communist supremo of the world. Scargill was a denier of and a defender of countless communist atrocities all across the globe. He wanted to visit this reign of terror on the United Kingdom. Scargill was one of many unrepentant communists who joined the Labour Party in their bid to abolish democracy and replace it with a totalitarian state. Scargill’s dream was to open concentration camps for political dissidents in the UK but it never came true. Scargill declared a national strike without even holding a ballot of NUM.

There were 180 000 miners in the UK at the time of the Miners’ Strike. Not all miners were members of the NUM. Even then not all NUM miners went on strike because there had been no national ballot. NUM wanted to hold people to ransom.

Mrs. Thatcher had seen this strike coming. The NUM had brought down Heath’s Conservative Government in 1974. Ten years on Thatcher was adamant that she would not allow the NUM to subvert the will of the people again.

The NUM resorted to intimidation. They committed violent crime against the police. They even murdered one man for going to work. The NUM was open about its real aim. It was not about saving jobs. It was about overthrowing the elected government as Scargill said time and time again. Though Scargill was never an MP he was a far more puissant figure on the left than even the leader of the Labour Party.

Coal is also the most polluting fuel. That did not stop leftists who pretend to care about the environment advocating for coal.

Neil was four square behind the government on this one. He believed that Britain must not bend the knee to the bully boy tactics of the NUM.

Labour did not throw its weight behind the strike because there was no national ballot. The far left fulminated that Neil Kinnock was a Judas for not giving unstinting support to their attempt to bring down democracy. Some extremists such as Tony Benn and Jeremy Corbyn endorsed the NUM’s anti-democratic campaign.

In the end the cause of freedom prevailed. Scargill led his acolytes to an ignominious defeat. There are now only 2 000 coal miners left.

In April 1986 Neil was one of 10 MPs (all of them Conservatives) to vote against Her Majesty’s Government on a bill which meant deeper European integration.

In the 1980s Neil came to know the late George Choudhury-Best who was a Conservative activist in London. Choudhury-Best was an Anglo-India who had shifted from the subcontinent to what he termed the ‘mother country’ some years after India suffered independence. Choudhury-Best disenjoyed Indian independence intensely. He was keenly alive to the manifold benisons that British superintendence had conferred upon the Subcontinent. Choudhury-Best recognized India as Britain’s nursling and was aghast at premature independence and all its concomitant horrors. He was appalled that the rampantly corrupt Congress Party was ruining the country with socialist policies that impeded its economy while becoming a Soviet ally. Communist governments had taken over West Bengal and Kerala. Independence had led to Partition and the murder of over a million people. None of these cataclysms would have befallen India if India had remained beneath Britannia’s benevolent shield for a few more decades.

Neil was not scared of making contentious remarks. In 1987 Frank Dobson the Labour MP and future Health Secretary made a speech about amputees. Neil quipped, ‘’he does not have a leg to stand on.’’ The left wing extremist and IRA supporter Jeremy Corbyn made a speech about the need to increase the state pension. Neil shot back, ‘’some of his IRA friends could be used to get rid of pensioners by shooting them.’’ In fairness, the IRA did kill a lot of pensioners.

Corbyn is the most extreme leftist ever elected to Westminster. He has been on the side of every enemy Britain has had since 1945. Corbyn is a publicist for most of the tyrannies around the world. Comrade Corbyn is an outspoken advocate of oppression and cruelty. He is a champagne socialist. His desire to help those in pauperism does not mean he donates a penny of his own. He is exceedingly generous but only with other people’s money instead. He still owns his house like the selfish capitalist he is.

In the 1980s Enoch Powell was still in Parliament. He was no longer a Tory but sat as an Ulster Unionist representing Down South – as in the southern part of County Down. Neil was an impassioned admirer of Powell. Neil says that he is not a racialist but that Powell was correct inasmuch as unchecked immigration has led to many fraught incidents.

For the left, Powell was a pantomime villain. Socialists students displayed placards bearing the legend ‘’disembowel Enoch Powell’’ when he came to address universities. Compassionate aren’t they these leftists? But Powell’s friends say he was not gargoyle.

Neil was an ardent Thatcherite. Despite his unswerving loyalty he was not rewarded with preferment.

Neil joined the No Turning Back Group. This was a ginger group of Thatcherites. It was founded by Michael Brown MP who turned out to be gay. Brown was in the closet in the 1980s. Other prominent MPs were members of the No Turning Back Group such as Alan Duncan, Peter Lilley, Gerald Howarth and Michael Portillo.

Conservative policy in the 1980s was to phase out leaded petrol. It degraded the environment and had a deleterious effect on the brain. It was linked to a heightened risk of criminality. Neil was dead against ending leaded petrol. He said that it had not been demonstrated that leaded petrol was in any way harmful to people or to the environment. That was an astonishing claim in view of scientific peer reviewed articles proving what leaded petrol does. He noted that it would hurt the economy if leaded petrol was forbidden. It was trademark Neil – swimming against the tide. He is an anti-environmentalist.

In 1985 Neil started to work for Ian Greer Associations. One of the main corporate clients was US Tobacco. Neil was ever the staunch libertarian. Michael Brown worked on this project with him.

As a politician Neil was always his own man. He was resolutely libertarian. In the 1980s a type of tobacco called Skoal Bandits was legally available in the UK. Some demanded it be prohibited because it was said to be very carcinogenic.

Edwina Currie and David Mellor were junior health ministers at the time. They were inclined to prohibit Skoal Bandits.

The House of Commons Select Committee on Standards produced a report concluding that Brown and Neil Hamilton had lobbied minister with a view to persuading them to allow Skoal Bandits. It noted that neither man declared an interest – that he had a financial interest in allowing Skoal Bandits. Neil admitted that he had not declared an interest.

Neil was almost alone in arguing that Skoal Bandits should remain legal because people have the right to take risks if they please. Furthermore, as we have seen with drugs – prohibition never works. Nevertheless, Skoal Bandits were outlawed.

While in the House of Commons, Neil proved himself to be a fearless advocate for liberty.  He was unwavering in defence of the right to smoke and indeed to do as one so pleases with one’s own body. He was the only MP out of 650 to vote against the government’s legislation banning the sale of human organs.

In 1986 Neil was made Parliamentary Private Secretary (PPS) to David Mitchell MP. This was a stepping stone to being a minister.

In November 1989 Neil won the Spectator magazine’s prize for being parliamentary wit of the year. With trademark drollery and self-effacement Neil joked that he believed it for being ‘’parliamentary twit of the year.’ Self-deprecation is one of Neil’s many endearing traits.

While in the House of Commons, Neil spoke up for the Western Goals Institute. Andrew V R Smith was then the head of the Western Goals Institute (WGI). Smith, like Neil, had been in the Monday Club. Reverend Martin Smith (an Ulster Unionist) was also a member. So were several Conservative parliamentarians: Sir Patrick Wall, Nicholas Winterton and Bill Walker. Neil was on the parliamentary advisory board of the WGI.

WGI was committed to the maintenance and furtherance of Western influence in all parts of the globe. Some its members were unabashed about advocating coups d’etats in other countries. It had fraternal links with Latin American juntas that did not win many prizes for human rights. WGI’s ‘muscular’ foreign policy had some saying that mercenaries ought to be hired to effectuate regime change in a manner congenial to British neo-imperialism.

WGI displayed questionable taste when in 1992 it invited Jean-Marie Le Pen to address them. Le Pen was then the leader of le Fronte National which his daughter Marine now heads. Le Pen was almost universally seen as a racist. Jean-Marie Le Pen was a perennial presidential candidate and in 2002 even came runner-up.

WGI also wanted Alessandra Mussolini to speak to them. Miss Mussolini is the granddaughter of Benito Mussolini. She also speaks up for her grandfather’s reputation. She was then a deputy in the Italian Parliament and a member of the European Parliament. She had also made a name for herself posing for ‘hard’ nude photos. La Mussolini spent much of her time in Brussels and Strasbourg singing hymns of praise to Il Duce. Both Le Pen and Mussolini were to speak to fringe meetings of the Tory Conference!  Alessandra Mussolini is a medical doctor but CCO suspected that her oration would not be solely restricted to health policy. An unapologetic apologist for fascism was not exactly the sort of person the Conservative Party considered to be an ideal conference speaker.

Sir Norman Fowler was then Chairman of the Conservative Party. He was incensed at the invitations – he considered fascism to be foul and was deeply worried at how it would ruin the party’s reputation. Fowler emphasized that the Conservative Party was not linked to the WGI. Both Le Pen and Mussolini were banned from entering the country so the meetings did not occur.

In the 1980s South Africa still had the apartheid (apartness) system. This segregated people of different races. The white minority comprised no more than 16% of the population of the Republic of South Africa. Whites virtually monopolized political power. They also owned 87% of the land. By law a white could not sell this land to a non-white person. The Bantustans reserved for black people were largely infertile and devoid of mineral resources. Such structured racial inequality appalled most of the world. Black people were not permitted to be citizens of South Africa. The South African Government used heavy violence to maintain control. The torture of those suspected of trying to overthrow the government was not uncommon. In the 1960s and 1970s there had been two fairly large scale massacres of unarmed black people by the South African Police.

South Africa refused to play sports against non-white players. Therefore South Africa was subject to a sporting boycott. The Springboks did not get to play foreign teams from 1970 till the early 1990s.

Most countries refused to trade with South Africa. The United Kingdom persisted in doing business with South Africa. Neil was one of those Conservatives who was adamantly opposed to sanctions against South Africa. He said he deplored apartheid but this was an internal matter. The United Kingdom happily did business with many far more tyrannical regimes and somehow that was not propping up oppression. In Zimbabwe, the Mugabe regime murdered several thousand people because they belonged to the Ndebele tribe. But the world turned Nelson’s eye to that one because the perpetrator was black. No one called for sanctions on Zimbabwe despite its regime slaughtering far more people than South Africa did. John Major even had the Queen give Mugabe an honorary knighthood!

In 1990 Nelson Mandela was released from prison in South Africa. It looked like apartheid might be abolished. Some people launched a desperate last ditch effort to preserve the racist system. Mandela later went on to be President of South Africa.

The anti-apartheid movement’s mantra was ‘’disinvest’’. Neil was dead against sanctions in South Africa. His argument was that apartheid was a domestic matter with which the United Kingdom must not interfere. Funnily enough governments that demanded sanctions on South Africa were usually the loudest in denouncing ‘’interference’’ and ‘’neo-colonialism’’ when anyone criticized their often appalling human rights records. Neil said that a moral principle had to be non-selective if it was to be moral at all. It was nonsense to impose sanctions against South Africa if the UK did not do so to black nationalist regimes north of the Limpopo which were often far more hideous than the apartheid government.

Margaret Thatcher had been against sanctions on South Africa on the ground that this would simply further impoverish black people who were already suffering pauperism. Moreover, there was no guarantee that sanctions would lead to political reform. A far smaller country, Cuba, had toughed out sanctions for far longer and its oppressive regime remained intact.

One of the reasons that Neil cited for being opposed to sanctions on South Africa was that this would increase unemployment in the UK. The MPs who demanded that the UK ban all trade with South Africa were usually the same ones who harped on the most about how evil unemployment was. But there they were demanding that their constituents be rendered jobless.

Neil also noted that South Africa was a reliable Cold War ally and the war could turn hot at any moment. The Treaty of Vereeniging which ended the Second South African War in 1902 stated that native affairs (i.e. the rights of black people) was the exclusive competence of the South African Government and the UK was not to interfere in this policy area.

Neil may have been a model for the late Rik Mayall’s character Alan B’stard. B’stard is a conniving self-serving Tory MP of fervently pro-apartheid views, raging vanity who has a sexually insatiable blonde wife. I wonder who that could be? Alan B’stard also drinks champagne and will only drink it if it is South African. This in an era of the anti-apartheid boycott of South African goods. Some say that B’stard was based on a composite of Tory MPs.

Neil worked for Strategy Network International (SNI). This company was founded with the aim of lobbying against sanctions on South Africa and Namibia which was the under South African control. In SNI Neil met Derek Laud. SNI wanted the United Kingdom to break UN Resolution 435 calling for genuine independence for Namibia. Laud and Neil had a mutual friend – Michael Brown MP. Neil was paid GBP 8 000 per annum for his consultancy. That was a very considerable sum considering that the fees for Eton were GBP 10 000 at the time.

SNI managed to have Neil very well treated. He was flown business class to South Africa and put up in five star hotels.

Lady Margaret Thatcher visited the Hamilton’s not so humble abode on at least one occasion.

In July 1990 the Prime Minister appointed Neil as a whip. It was a time of intense controversy over the Community Charge which was commonly called the poll tax. Neil had been fervent in his support for the unpopular measure. This earned him Mrs. T’s gratitude.

In 1990 Thatcher introduced the Community Charge across England and Wales. It was dubbed the Poll Tax. It had been brought into Scotland the year before when the rates were up for review. The Government was horrified that Labour councils had been wasting public money on PC propaganda and nuclear free zones. Mrs. T believed that hardworking people should not have their money squandered on loony left nonsense.

The Community Charge was widely reviled. It was a flat tax payable to one’s local authority. Pensioners and those on benefits paid a lower amount and students were exempt. For the wealthy, the Community Charge was a tax cut. Neil was a firm advocate of the Community Charge. But it was so exceptionally unpopular that Conservative support in the opinion polls dropped to levels not seen again till the dark days of Liz Truss. In Scotland people complained bitterly that the tax was tried out on them before South Britain. This was held to be confirmatory of Scotland’s second class status.

It was easy to evade the Community Charge by taking oneself off the electoral register. Poorer people (mostly Labour voters) were inclined to do so. In which case the Tories would win forever. But Labour ought to like the tax – it had the word community in the name.

Some Conservatives began to think that the Iron Lady was a liability and not an asset. Tory Wets had long wanted to be shot of her. Mrs. T. was adamantine that there would be no compromise on the Community Charge. Full steam ahead with it! The brains behind it was the Honourable William (now Lord) Waldegrave. He was spoken about as PM material. But he lost his seat in 1997 and ended up being sent back to school – to Eton as Provost (i.e. live in head of the board of governors).

In November 1990 Michael Heseltine challenged Thatcher for the leadership of the party and thus the prime ministership. The Chief Whip told Neil that as a whip it behoved him to maintain the strictest neutrality. Neil disregarded this instruction. Whatever he learnt about Heseltine’s campaign he passed on to the Thatcher camp. Neil said to the Prime Minister that she ought to interview each of the Cabinet individually. He thought that they would lack the courage to tell her that they wanted her to resign. However, Neil was wrong and several of them told Thatcher to stand down.

Despite several Cabinet ministers urging Thatcher to step down as PM, Neil pleaded with her to stay on. In a meeting of backbench Tories, Peter Lilley said that Thatcher had had her day. Neil interrupted Lilley and expressed his disdain for Lilley as a faint heart.

On 21 November 1990 Neil and other Thatcherite fanatics met the PM for one last time at Number 10 Downing Street. Thatcher resigned the next day. In the subsequent Tory leadership election there were three candidates.

Michael Heseltine was a Europhile Tory wet who had resigned from the Cabinet in 1986 over the Westland Helicopter Affair. Heseltine pretended it was a principle resignation. In fact the miscalculated thinking the Tories would lose the 1987 election and be could become party leader. This man of raging vanity and vaulting ambition never made it to the top of the greasy pole. He came close though: being Deputy Prime Minister from 1995 to 1997. Heseltine was the son of a Welsh factory owner. He had been to Shrewbsury, Oxford and the Welsh Guards. He was scorned for wearing his Guards tie for more days than he was in the Guards: sixty.

Then there as Douglas Hurd who was also a One Nation Tory and a Europhile but had been loyal to Thatcher. Hurd had been Captain of School at Eton before going up to King’s College, Cambridge and working in the Foreign Office. Hurd played down his poshness saying his pater had only been a tenant farmer. But as the son and grandson of Tory MPs he was a bit too much of a toff.

Lastly there was John Major. Major was seen as a Eurosceptic and a Thatcherite. He also came from a working class background unlike the others. That was perceived to be electorally advantageous. The other candidates were too posh.

Neil cast his ballot for Major. He believed that Major would continue Thatcher’s legacy. Neil was to be bitterly disillusioned.

In 1990 after Thatcher fell it was a pity for Neil was perfervid in support of his Monetarist policies. However, it also presented an opportunity. She had steadfastly refused to promote him from the backbenches.

John Major became Prime Minister. Soon Neil gained promotion. He was made an under parliamentary secretary for corporate affairs in 1992. He then became Minister for Deregulation and Corporate Affairs. This was a brief he relished because was a true believer in the mission. This was a junior ministership. Under each Cabinet minister there are three or four junior ministers. A Cabinet Minister usually has the title Secretary of State. Junior ministers are styled ‘Minister of State’. The next step for Neil would be promotion into the cabinet.

The hot topic was the Treaty of Maastricht. This treaty signed in the Netherlands was to turn the European Economic Community into the European Union. Neil was deeply skeptical about it. He believed that European integration had gone as far as it should. Like Thatcher he believed that the EEC was imposing too much regulation and degrading national sovereignty. He feared that if the EEC became the EU this would aggravate these tendencies. Denmark held a referendum on Maastricht. The Danes voted No in June 1992. Then Denmark held a second referendum and the result was affirmative.

Although Neil had deep misgivings about Maastricht he remained faithful to the Major Administration. Some other Conservative ministers resigned in opposition to Maastricht. Neil beseeched them not to do so.

Neil was sent to meetings of the Council of Ministers of the European Union. He became deeply disillusioned with the European Union (EU). He came to think it was unreformable and hell-bent to removing all national sovereignty.

In the 1990s Neil became involved with a parliamentary lobbyist named Ian Greer. Greer brought a new more pro-active style to lobbying. Mr. Greer was homosexual and Neil was not prejudiced against Greer because of his orientation. This was an era in which homosexuality was still deeply disapproved of by many Tories. No Tory MP came out as gay until Alan Duncan did in 2001. Duncan, the MP for Rutland and Melton, incidentally was another friend of Neil’s.

Harvey Proctor was also a friend of Neil’s. Proctor was a Conservative MP who got into trouble when he had an encounter with a rentboy whom he believed was 21 but turned out to be 17. It was an innocent mistake and could happen to anyone.

On his solicitor’s advice Proctor pleaded guilty to an offence in relation to this. He got a suspended sentence. There is no suggestion that Neil was involved in Mr. Proctor’s encounter with the ill-judged rentboy encounter or was even aware of it. Proctor subsequently left politics and ran a gentlemen’s outfitters. He had always been a shirt lifter!

In 1992 Neil happened to be in Harvey Proctor’s shirt shop when two men assaulted Proctor for homophobic reasons. Neil valiantly came to the defence of his friend. He suffered a broken nose for his pains. The two assailants were later jailed for their attack.

It was in the 1990s that Neil came to know Derek Laud. Laud was a Conservative activist. Unusually for a Tory at the time he was black and born in the United Kingdom to Jamaican immigrant parents and flamboyantly gay. Derek Laud grew up in a family with little money. He joined the Monday Club which was often accused of being anti-black. Laud is also gay. He was selected as a Conservative prospective parliamentary candidate for the 1997 election. However, he withdrew when allegations of unethical conduct were made against him. This did not stop him being made Joint Master of the new Forest Foxhounds . He was later a Big Brother star. But he was so loathed by his competitor who called himself ‘Science’ – who was also black – that Science said ‘’Laud is the first black person ever who actually makes me want to join the BNP.’’

Laud had written speeches for Thatcher and also for Alan Clark MP. That was despite Clark having said of the Ugandan Asians in 1973, ‘’they must be told ‘you cannot come here because you are not white.’ ’’ Laud was a friend of David Cameron’s. Years later he became so horrified with the ineptitude of Theresa May that he joined the Lib Dems and even stood for them in Cameron’s old seat of Witney, Oxfordshire.

Neil knew an Egyptian tycoon named Mohammed Fayed. Mr. Fayed was best known for owning Britain’s flagship department store: Harrod’s. Fayed was a fraud who could not even tell the truth about his name. The man from Alexandria styled himself Al Fayed – misusing the nobiliary particule. He also gave several contradictory answers about his year of birth. It was proven that he ordered a break-in to a safety deposit box owned by a business rival named Tiny Roland. Fayed had been a Conservative donor. However, he became embittered when his application for British citizenship was refused.

Fayed had grown up in Alexandria as the son of a schoolteacher. They family was higher status than you might expect because most Egyptians were illiterate at the time. Fayed was a very small businessman until the early 1950s. By some miracle he managed to marry a Miss Khasshoggi. She was from a very affluent and well-connected Saudi Arabian family. Admittedly this is because the Saudis became as rich as Crassus. His well got wife opened many doors for him. Before you can say ‘’bribery’’ he had fat contracts in Saudi Arabia. He later served as the honorary consul for one of the most dishonourable dictators in the world – Papa Doc Duvalier of Haiti.

Mr. Fayed craved the one thing he never deserved: respectability. He laboured under the misapprehension that gentlemanliness could be bought. But common decency is not a commodity for sale.It was as though Fayed sought to exemplify Oscar Wilde’s dictum – he knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.

Mohammed Fayed was an oleaginous social climber. There was more than a touch of Melmotte from The Way we live now by Anthony Trollope. He purchased the former home of the Duke and Duchess of Windsor in Paris. This, Fayed reasoned, brought him closer to the royal family. Then Fayed became the major financial donor to the Royal Windsor Horse Show. This again was a bid to buy some kudos. His donation obliged Her Gracious Majesty to deign to meet him.

Mr. Fayed was of the Mohammedan persuasion. He never pretended to be a pious Muslim. If hirsuteness is indicative of Islamic observance it is notable that Fayed was always clean-shaven. He was partial to spirituous liquor but not to orisons nor did he profess to be a Koranic scholar. There was little anti-Muslim prejudice in the United Kingdom before 9/11. The average Briton knew precious little about Muslims or Islam. Fayed did not try that old chestnut – that he was a victim of anti-Muslim animus. Nor did he say he was hard done by on account of his nationality or ethnicity.

On October 1994 the Guardian newspaper ran a story saying that Tim Smith MP and Neil Hamilton MP had been paid cash by Mr. Fayed for asking questions in Parliament.

Fayed alleged that he had paid Neil and another MP in cash to ask questions in the House of Commons. The shopkeeper said that sometimes cash was handed to the MPs in envelopes and on other occasions money was paid to Ian Greer and was then passed on to the MPs in question. Another Tory MP such as Tim Smith admitted that this was true and on 19 October 1994 he stood down from his ministerial post. Mr. Smith also stated that he would leave Parliament at the next general election. Tim Smith was an Old Harrovian who sat for Beaconsfield in Buckinghamshire. Notably, Smith was the one who defeated Tony Blair in Blair’s first attempt to enter Parliament: the 1982 by election.

Neil vehemently denied ever taking cash to ask questions. The then Deputy Prime Minister Michael Heseltine questioned Neil about the issue. Neil categorically denied ever having any financial relationship with Fayed. Mohammed Fayed boasted ‘’you hire an MP like you hire a taxi.’’ He was so rancorous about being refused British citizenship by a Tory Government that he decided to embarrass the Conservative Party as much as he possibly could. He became a passionate Labour supporter despite not being able to vote. It was solely out of spite – he wanted to give the Tories one in the eye. If Fayed wanted to exact vengeance he certainly succeeded.

Neil initiated libel proceedings against those who had accused him of taking cash for questions. John Major said to Neil that the whirlwind of negative publicity around this was harming the government. He told Neil to resign or he would be dismissed.  On 26 October 1994 Neil was prevailed upon to resign from his government post. Relentless negative publicity about him was damaging the government. The attacks on Neil’s honour continued unabated.

The libel action was against the Guardian newspaper. Ian Greer was Neil’s co-plaintiff in the case. In 1996 the Defamation Act amended the Bill of Rights 1989. This permitted utterances made in Parliament to be questioned in court.

The day before the case was due to be heard the two co-plaintiffs settled saying that they could not afford to pursue the action and there was a conflict of interests. The Guardian then triumphantly published a headline about Neil dubbing him ‘’a liar and a cheat.’’ They were sure that Neil would never sue. Alan Rusbridger was then the editor of the newspaper. He crowed about how the two has capitulated.

On 1 October 1996 – the day that the libel trial would have commenced – Alan Rusbridger and Neil went head to head on Newsnight – a nightly current affairs show on the BBC.

Many scurrilous stories about Neil appeared in the Guardian. The Guardian is of course the sewer of choice for leftist ordure.

To some it appeared that Neil had been a victim of the left wing gutter press. Tories were accustomed to being monstered by scurrilous and scabrous dishonest pinko-liberal hacks.

Sir Gordon Downey was the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards. He began an investigation into the allegations against Neil. The investigation came to a conclusion in 1997. Neil said that were the report to be critical of him then he would stand down from Parliament.

Edwina Currie gave evidence to the enquiry. Miss Currie was a fellow Tory but had been a nemesis of Neil’s for many years. She said that when she showed Neil photos of the cancers caused by tobacco this did not sway him at all. Neil said he judged the issue on the merits and not on emotive images. He was perfectly aware that smoking can kill but that people ought to be permitted to make their own decisions regarding health and lifestyle. Neil and Michael Brown MP had been paid GBP 6 000 each and been provided with free hotel stays and lavish dinners by Skoal Bandits in return for seeking to keep their product lawful. In 1989 Kenneth Clarke, the Secretary of State for Health, signed an order banning Skoal Bandits. This was despite Clarke being a lifelong smoker and indeed working as a consultant for British American Tobacco.

Currie’s concern for health was odd. She said that cervical cancer was caused by crisps and northerners. She opined that good Christian people do not catch AIDS. She later resigned in a dispute over salmonella. It was a storm in an egg cup.

What no one knew at the time was that the married Edwina Currie was then having an affair with the also married John Major. They are both so repulsive I do not know which one of them should be more ashamed. In the early 1990s Major was to launch his ill-starred back to basics campaign. His crusade for personal morality came to grief when it was revealed that several Tory MPs had a predeliction for adultery. Had Mrs. Currie revealed than that she was penetrated by Major in the 1980s then it could easily have brought him down as Prime Minister.

Throughout this time Neil was being savaged in the newspapers every single day. Lunchtime O’Booze and Glenda Slagg type columnists always had him in their sights. This unrelenting media campaign depicted Neil as Mr. Sleaze.

Sir Gordon Downey’s report reached damning conclusions about Neil. Downey said that the evidence against Neil in the cash for questions affair was convincing.  It found that Neil had misled Michael Heseltine who was then the President of the Board of Trade and later the Deputy Prime Minister. Neil said that he did not have any financial ties to Ian Greer. Whereas in fact Neil had been paid by Greer on two occasions in 1988 and 1989 and these two sums had added up to GBP 10 000. In fairness this had been five years before Heseltine posed the question to him. In Neil’s mind this was ancient history and it was true in 1994 that he had no financial relationship with Greer at that time.

Neil and his goodwife had stayed in the Ritz Hotel in Paris and in Mr. Fayed’s Scottish castle gratis. Neil had not declared these in the register of members’ interests. Downey found that this was ethically below par and in breach of the Nolan Standards in Public Life.

Michael Brown was in a spot of bother. He had long before acknowledged being paid GBP 8 000 by US Tobacco and not cited it in the Register of Members Interests as he was legally obliged to do. But in the 1990s it emerged that the 40 something MP had been on a Caribbean holiday with a 20 year old man and shared a double bed with him. The gay age of consent was 21 at the time. What Brown was doing was technically illegal. He was not prosecuted. John Major said that homosexuality was no longer a resigning matter. Brown was not ‘out’ at the time. But when the news broke he publicly stated that he was gay.

Michael Brown also lost his seat in the 1997 election. Downey said that if Neil and Tim Smith had still been in Parliament after the election then they should have both been suspended for a long period of time.

Neil fiercely defended himself. He said the report was shoddy and based on hearsay. He accused it of bias. It was not a judicial inquiry, did not have a presumption of innocence and did not require the criminal standard of proof.

Tim Smith said he agreed with the conclusions of the report and sought no further role in public life.

Fayed was a deeply unsavoury character. His wastrel son Dodi Fayed was a fully qualified professional playboy. Dodi was engaged to an American model in 1997 when he began a liaison with the recently divorced Princess Diana. When the Ishmaelite businessman heard that his son had begun an intimate relationship with the princess he was jubilant. This was the establishment validation that he had yearned for with such flagrant indignity. Dodi dropped his fiancée like a hot potato and sent her a few million Pounds to encourage her to go away and shut up.

Dodi’s relationship with Diana lasted all of three weeks. They were together for about 10 of these 21 days. Nonetheless Fayed claimed without any evidence at all that the two were engaged and that Diana was pregnant by Dodi. Several investigations have disconfirmed these outlandish statements. Neil was up against a man with a proven record for outrageous falsity and utter ruthlessness.

Mr. and Mrs. Hamilton had accepted a free weekend in the Paris Ritz Hotel which Fayed owned. They acknowledged that this was true. It emerged that Mrs. Hamilton had even taken postage stamps for free from the hotel.

The Hamilton’s submitted to an exhaustive Revenue and Customs investigation of their finances and tax affairs. They came out of it smelling of roses.

In the June of 1995 Jon Major made a shock announcement. He resigned as leader of the party. But he had not resigned as PM. It was a back me or sack me move. He was fed up to the back teeth of all the carping. His resignation triggered a leadership contest in the Conservative Party. It was hoped by many on the right of the party that Michael Portillo who was Secretary of State for Defence would contest the leadership. Some Portillistas set up a campaign HQ and even installed extra telephone lines. But he did not stand and instead remained in the Cabinet and asked people to vote for Major. John Redwood resigned as Secretary of State for Wales and he stood against Major. Neil remained enamoured of Portillo despite Portillo letting him down in 1995. Indeed in 2001 when Portillo sought the Tory leadership he lost out on getting into the ballot of ordinary party members by one vote. Neil then expressed his sympathy for Portillo and said it was a pity that Portillo had not won.

Neil was bitterly disappointed with Major’s spinelessness and Europhilia. Under Major there was a sense that direction had been lost. He had no vision for the country. He was also as accident prone as can be. Neil lent his full support to Redwood. Redwood was seen to be too right wing. With a D.Phil from Oxford he was clearly and alpha mind but he was distinctly lacking in emotional intelligence. One journalist said that Redwood came across as a space alien in human form. His supporters were accused of being swivel eyed loons and foam flecked fanatics. Tony Marlow in his striped blazer came in for particular execration.

In the end Major won the votes of about 75% of Tory MPs. But he was not to survive as leader of the party for two more years.

In the mid-1990s the Tory Party was mired in allegations of sleaze. The press was extremely hostile to the party. Neil was savaged by the gutter press.

The Guardian is the United Kingdom’s main left wing broadsheet newspaper. The Guardian excoriated Neil as ‘a liar and a cheat’ in a screaming headline. The left wing media had successfully depicted him as Mr. Sleaze. It was a perception that was very difficult to correct because of the Semmelweis Reflex. Once people get a notion in their minds it is all but impossible to disabuse them of this misapprehension even if one presents a mountain of the most irrefragable evidence.

In 1996 Neil and he co-claimant withdrew their libel action. They were panned for this in the press.

Conservative Central Office lent on Neil not to stand in the 1997 election. They said that even if he was innocent he was attracting enormous amounts of hostile press coverage. This was preventing the Conservative message getting out. They asked him if he would please announce that he would not seek re-election for the good of the party. Neil adamantly refused to do so. He was innocent and he would let his constituents vindicate him.

Tatton was the fourth safest Conservative seat in the UK. Neil had won in 1992 by 16 000 votes. His position seemed unassailable in spite of the extremely negative reportage on him in most of the press. But being misportrayed by the media for several years was taking a toll on Neil’s standing in the constituency.

The Parliamentary Standard Commissioner investigated Neil. Neil’s withdrawal of his libel action seemed to some to be confirmatory of his guilt. Some Tory MPs begged him to step aside but he would not budge. In those days CCO had no say whatsoever over whom a local Conservative Association picked as its candidate. Neil is perhaps the single greatest reason why CCO now has the legal power to block local Conservative associations from selecting candidates whom CCO finds uncongenial.

There was much unease in Tatton Conservative Association. Nevertheless, the majority of Tatton Tories stuck with Neil. They believed him to be the victim of a leftist smear campaign. His chief accuser was a pathological liar. Never trust a man who cannot even tell the truth about his own name of year of birth.

In April 1997 it was time for the Tatton Conservative Association to choose their candidate for the upcoming election. 182 Conservatives voted for Neil to be their candidate. 35 voted against him. There were 100 abstentions. That was not the ringing endorsement he wanted. Only 55% of Conservatives in the constituency had voted for him.

There were two other Conservative MPs who were dogged by sleaze allegations. They were Piers Merchant and Allan Stewart. Stewart sat for a seat in Scotland. Merchant had been the President of the Durham Union and by 1997 was the MP for Beckenham in Kent. The married middle aged Tory was having an affair with a 17 year old nightclub hostess named Anna Cox. An ICM poll for the Observer newspaper showed that Merchant and Stewart were both fairly popular in their seats in but that Neil’s popularity had evaporated. But many in Tatton viewed Neil as a slimeball.

For 3 years Neil had braved brutal headlines almost every single day. It proves how indomitable he is that he stood up to such bile from the media.

Jonathan Aitken – the Conservative MP for Thanet – was also facing allegations of taking unethical payments from Mohammed Fayed. At the time the scandal broke he was Chief Secretary to the Treasury. He was spoken of as a future Prime Minister. A 6’4’’ lean marathon runner with chiseled features – he looked like a leader. He had impeccable establishment credentials – he was the son of a Canadian peer who was a war hero; he was the nephew of a newspaper magnate, Aitken also had an Eton and Oxford education behind him.  He had been a Fleet Street journalist and a war correspondent in Vietnam. He had once been the toast of the media for defending the free press and even being willing to risk prison for doing so. Jonathan Aitken was an Anglican lay preacher.  He had even been the boyfriend of Thatcher’s only daughter – Carol. Aitken dumped Carol because he was two-timing her: unbeknownst to Carol he was also going out with a Yugoslavian blonde named Lolicia. Aitken proposed to Lolicia and jilted Carol. People later asked Mrs. Thatcher why should would never give this talented young backbench MP a government post. Margaret Thatcher would never promote Aitken despite the blandishments of his many admirers. Why? He made Carol cry.

He had midwifed arms deals with Saudi Arabia which had netted him millions. Some felt that his eagerness to sell weapons to a cruel Islamist tyranny flew in the face of his much vaunted Christian faith. Saudi Arabia did not allow Christian worship. Anyone caught with a Bible or conducting prayer meetings would spend years in a fetid dungeon. The Saudi Government promoted anti-Christian forces in Sudan and the Philippines. How could a Christian defend such a regime? It seemed that Aitken had no conscience. He had a moral standard. His arms deal commission fee was a very high moral standard. Somehow money salved his qualms. His sexual infidelity did not sit well with his pharisaical posturing either.

A documentary called Jonathan of Arabia suggested that he had pimped for Arab princelings. The relentless press attacks in Aitken led to him eventually agreeing to resign. His presence in Cabinet was at the very least a distraction from the government’s message.

Aitken insisted he had not done so and he had paid for his stay in the Paris Ritz which was then owned by the Egyptian grocer. Mr. Aitken claimed his daughter and his Yugoslav wife Lolicia were with him Paris at the material time.  Aitken unwisely took out a libel action against the Guardian newspaper. Aitken pressured his teenage daughter into perjurious statements to help him out of a tight corner. In the end Guardian journalists were able to obtain records that proved that Mrs. Aitken and her daughter had lodged in a hotel in Switzerland on the night in question and thus could not possibly have been in Paris.

Jonathan Aitken swore on the Holy Bible before testifying in court. As he was a self-professed Christian who often preached in the Church of England it is particularly horrifying that he profaned the Christian faith by perjuring himself when he had sworn on the Good Book to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. His statements in court were proven to be false.

The Guardian later celebrated Aitken’s downfall. The headline was He lied and lied and lied.

Luke Harding is the Guardian scribbler who make Aitken his quarry over several years. He published a deeply disobliging biography of the Conservative cabinet minister. Aitken had the unenviable distinction of being the first politician to have a biography of him published titled The Liar.

Aitken was later sent down for perjury. His memoir Pride and Perjury is a riveting read and gives a sense of what the era was like for doom-stricken Tories. Aitken had always been a practicing Anglican. He really found Jesus anew in prison. When he came out he went to Oxford forty years after taking his first degree. Aitken was later ordained a Church of England priest.

In 1997 the election was called. The BBC journalist Martin Bell stood against Neil. Bell was then famous for his reportage from Yugoslavia in the midst of its wars. He had been shot whilst finishing a broadcast. This had made him a public hero. Bell was seen as the voice of reason and unpolitical. The media coverage of Martin Bell’s campaign was entirely favourable. His campaign was helped by the presence of his outstandingly nubile blonde daughter. Bell insisted on wearing a white suit throughout the campaign as if it were indicative of his purity. There was a media circus around him. Labour and the Lib Dems knew they had little chance of taking Tatton even though the press was almost universally negative towards Neil. But Labour and the Lib Dems knew that the Tories could lose the seat. Labour and the Lib Dems therefore withdrew their candidates. This gave Bell a clear run.

Had Labour and the Lib Dems not withdrawn their candidates then Neil would very likely have retained the seat albeit narrowly. Conversely, had Bell not stood but Labour and the Lib Dems fielded candidates then again it is highly probable that Neil would still have saved his seat but again not by a large margin.

Bell stood as the anti-corruption candidate. Neil disliked this label intensely and said it was deeply disingenuous. He wanted to ask Bell a question on camera. Neil sought out his challenger. Bell and Neil met each other on Knutsford Common and had a famous exchange filmed by the TV cameras. Neil’s insouciance was incredible. Neil said that by Martin Bell calling himself ‘anti-corruption’ this unmistakably implied that Neil was corrupt. Christine harangued Martin Bell. This transformed her from an unknown into a celebrity. Neil was remarkably restrained and courteous. Bell said he was independent and not anti-corruption. He extended the presumption of innocence to Neil. Neil then welcomed Bell as an independent candidate.

Labour possibly committed a grave blunder in withdrawing its candidate in Tatton. For Labour, Neil was a gift that kept on giving. As long as Neil was an MP the newspapers would be full of the headline ‘’Tory sleaze.’’ But if he was booted out of Parliament then he would no longer be so closely associated with the party. Strangely, Neil was worth more to Labour in Parliament than out of it. It was actually in Labour’s interests for Neil to win his seat. Depriving the Conservatives of one more seat was of negligible importance in an election where Labour was predicted to win and did win a staggering majority.

Bill Roach was a local celebrity from his role in the long running soap opera Coronation Street. He turned up to campaign for Neil. Neil still had friends in high places.

In the wee hours of 2 May the result was announced by the returning officer. Neil’s massive majority had been overturned. Bell beat him by a staggering 11 000 votes. It was a swing of an unprecedented 48%. Martin Bell won an unprecedented 60% of the vote. No one in Tatton had ever won by that much. There were three ‘independent conservatives’ who also stood as well as the usual collection of loonies who stand in high profile seats.

Martin Bell was Britain’s first independent MP in decades. Neil remained ever defiant. He swore he would be back in Parliament one day.

Bell served one term as MP for Tatton. He vowed he would not seek a second one. In 2001 he stood in Brentwood and Ongar against another Conservative. Bell said this was because the local Conservative Association had been taken over by a religious cult. It was staggering that he stood against a Conservative again when there were many pathological liars on the Labour benches – mainly Tony Blair. This time Bell was unsuccessful.

On 3 July 1997 the Downey report was published. It said that Neil had taken cash for questions. It specifically said that Neil had even been paid in brown paper envelopes. The Independent newspaper reported on it extensively. It suggested that the new Tory supremo William Hague expel Neil from his party if the Tories were ever to expunge the disgrace that clung to them.

The Downey Report savaged Michael Grylls and Michael Brown. Michael Grylls was an ex Royal Marines officer and then the MP for Chertsey and the father of Bear Grylls who is now Chief Scout.

The issue of Neil Hamilton remained divisive for several years in the constituency. In 1999 George Osborne sought to be selected as the Conservative candidate for the seat. The 28 year old Osborne was the heir to a wallpaper fortune. He had been educated at St Paul’s and Oxford. After a stint as a struggling political journalist he had worked for Tory Central Office. He found it prudent not to voice an opinion on Neil Hamilton. Some association members remained devoted to Neil. There were others who reviled him. Osborne went on to be elected in 2001. He later served as Chancellor of the Exchequer.

Out of Parliament

John Major resigned as leader of the Conservative Party immediately after the electoral defeat. He stayed on in a caretaker capacity until such time as a replacement could be elected. William Hague was duly elected leader in June 1997. Hague was one of the youngest Tory MPs aged only 35. He was also the former Secretary of State for Wales. Hague was then dating a civil servant in the Welsh Office: Ffion. These days this would be considered deeply inappropriate. His Welsh connection did not endear him to Neil Hamilton.

Hague believed that the party badly needed to move on from the scandal-struck Major years. He implored Neil not to attend the 1997 conference. The Conservatives needed him there like they needed a hole in the head. Neil bowed to Hague’s entreaty and agreed not to show his face at the party conference.

On 9 May 1997 – five days after he lost his seat – Neil was on Have I Got News for You. Angus Deayton was the host of the penal game show. Deayton wore a white suit for the only ever time – it was redolent of Martin Bell’s white suit that he famously sported in the Tatton election. The Hamilton’s were paid their fee in brown paper envelopes. Neil hit back, ‘’I’ve found its much better making political jokes than being one.’’

Neil chose not to return to practice at the bar. He was sick of what he called ‘’a constipated profession’’ and said he would not be able to contain himself when dealing with judges – he would tell members of the bench what he really thought of them. What Neil and Christine did have was an awful lot of publicity. They started to monetize this.

In 1999 the Oxford University Conservative Association (OUCA) invited Neil and Christine to be guests of honour at their termly dinner. OUCA was well known for holding ‘OUCA-holic’ events. The President of the Association was an eccentric alcoholic high camp homosexual of reactionary leanings named Steven Philip Doody. The boozy dinner went well enough. They then repaired to Steven’s set of rooms in Balliol College, Oxford for the after party. They were all well-oiled!

The Oxford Student newspaper published an article on the after party in Balliol. The headlined proclaimed ‘OUCA lurch to Reich wing.’

The after party involved choruses of songs in questionable taste such as a song to the melody of ‘Dashing through the snow’. The lyrics go: ‘dashing through the Reich/ In a black Mercedes benz/ killing lots of kikes/ rat a tat at at/ Mow ze buggers down/ Oh what fun it is to be/ ze SS in ze town/ Oh lebensraum/ lebensraum…’ This revolting song joking about the Holocaust was not considered ideal publicity for the new and inclusive Conservative Party. No one has said that Neil or Christine ever participated in singing these anti-Semitic songs or even knew the lyrics.

Christine by her own admission goes for anything in trousers. There was a law undergraduate from Christ Church named Will Goodhand. Christine and Will got along very well indeed! They snogged. On seeing this some Oxonians said, ‘’do it again for the camera.’’ The canoodling couple happily obliged. At the time Will was 19 and Christine was 50. So she was a bit young by Will’s standards!

The photo was sold to the Sun newspaper for several thousand pounds. That was a very tidy sum in 1999. Bear in mind undergraduate fees were GBP 1 000 per annum back then.

‘A minging Tory snog’ was the headline splashed across the front page of the Sun. Will Goodhand was seeing snogging Chirstine Hamilton.

The Hamiltons said those who had stooped so low as to sell this photo to the Sun ought to be ‘osctracised.’ Mrs. Hamilton commented that ‘’if he thinks that was a snog then he has a lot to learn.’’

Will Goodhand went along with the Sun and posed for photos with a Page Three girl. The article said he took her on a date punting and to dinner. The latter part is not true but they paid for Will to dine on his own. Will was later an unsuccessful Conservative parliamentary candidate and a semi-successful radio DJ.

On 16 January 1997 Mohammed Fayed went on the Channel 4 documentary Dispatches. Fayed said that Neil had been given cash payments totally GBP 110 000 over several years and had been given Harrod’s gift vouchers free of charge as well as being allowed to stay at the Paris Ritz for free on a long weekend in 1987. All this was in payment for Neil asking questions for Fayed in the House of Commons. Neil always admitted that he had stayed in the Paris Ritz Hotel at Fayed’s expense but insisted that there was no impropriety involved in accepting the free hospitality.

In 1999 Martin Bell MP went to address the Oxford Union. His predecessor as the MP for Tatton decided to surprise Mr. Bell. Neil is a life member of the Cambridge Union. There is reciprocity of membership or one might even say mutuality between the Oxford Union and the Cambridge Union. Neil and Christine attended the meeting and sat in the front row much to Bell’s chagrin. He was egregiously discombobulated to see them there. At the Union Neil’s old chum Fr David Johnson entertained him royally. The late Fr Johnson was then on the Standing Committee of the Oxford Union. He was its oldest ever member aged 45.

On 31 July 1998 Neil’s libel action was given a court listing. Though Neil was a barrister himself he chose not to defend himself. Defamation was not his area of law. He had many supporters who contributed most liberally to his legal fighting fund.

Neil still had friends in high places. Lord Harris of High Cross donated to Neil Hamilton’s libel action fund as he had done in 1984. Taki contributed to his legal costs as did Lord Harris of High Cross. The Earl of Portsmouth also contributed. Gerald Howarth MP contributed as did Gyles Brandreth (former Tory MP for Chester and television show presenter), the right wing curmudgeon journalist Simon Heffer, Lord Bell and Peter Clarke. There were only 165 Tory MPs left in 1997 and 40 of them contributed to the fighting fund. That was a staggering level of support given the wall to wall vitriol against Neil in the popular press. Over GBP 410 000 was raised. Libel is an astonishingly expensive business. A single day in court with a junior barrister will set you back at least several thousand pounds.

Defamation cases can be heard by a judge or by a jury. If the parties cannot agree which way the case will be tried then the judge shall determine which means of trying the case will be serve the interests of justice. The trouble with a jury is that Neil’s name had been dragged through the mire for years before the case opened. Therefore many jurors may have been prejudiced against him. The press had been traducing him and it would be very hard for jurors to put this out of their minds.

If Neil won the case his reputation would be restored, he would win hundreds of thousands of pounds in compensation and he could get his seat back. Neil and Christine were bullish about their chances of winning. That is suggestive of innocence. Why would they stake everything on it if they were culpable?

In November 1999 the trial began. The judge had to ascertain that the jury was not biased. Fayed owned Fulham Football Club. He asked if there were any Fulham supporters on the jury. To public amusement it emerged that none of them were Fulham fans.

In the case Fayed was asked why he called himself Al Fayed when his surname was actually ‘Fayed’. ‘’Call me Al Capone if you liked’’ he quipped to gales of laughter.

Fayed repeated his claim in court that Neil had been paid cash in brown paper envelopes sometimes these were handed to Neil by Fayed’s staff and sometime the payments were made via Ian Greer.  Neil repeated his denial that he had ever accepted an ob from Fayed, either directly or via an intermediary but said it was true that he had stayed in Fayed’s hotel for free. The counsel for Neil said that Fayed’s false statements had ruined Neil’s good name.

Fayed hired the foremost QC of the day: George Carman. Mohammed Fayed was in the witness box against Neil. The case lasted 6 weeks. Jonathan Aitken is another former Conservative MP who was hit with sleaze allegations. Aitken described being cross-examined by Carman as being ‘’carmanised.’’ Carman is the only barrister whose name became a verb! He was a fearsome advocate. Carman had had his old university friend Jeremy Thorpe sensationally acquitted of conspiracy to murder in 1979. Thorpe was the erstwhile leader of the Liberal Party.

Neil and Christine were both cross-examined by the fearsome George Carman QC. Carman QC asked Neil if he had been corrupt in 1989 when he asked Mobil Oil for GBP 10 000 to table an amendment on a finance bill. Neil was then on the House of Commons Select Committee on Finance.

George Carman QC the continued to cross examine Neil. Neil would usually gave lengthy answers that to some gave an impression of chicanery. Carman would then snort contumeliously, ‘’you finished?’’ Surprisingly the judge did not reprimand Carman for such ungentlemanly conduct. But Neil’s loquacity appeared to be his undoing. It seemed to have a negative impact on the jury’s view of him.

There was some sympathy for Fayed so soon after his son’s death. The public, particularly in London, was still egregiously anti-Conservative. This may have prejudiced the jury.

On 21 December 1999 the jury found for Fayed on the basis of justification. His utterances regarding Neil were held to be substantially veracious. Neil was branded corrupt.

Neil and his wife came out of the Royal Courts of Justice. They appeared as though they were gazing into hell. He had bet the bank on winning the case and restoring his reputation and political career. Now he was doomed. Down into the abyss he would have to go. Some people would have been driven to suicide by this calamity.

Neil appealed and lost. He sought leave to appeal again this time to the House of the Lords which at the time functioned as the Supreme Court. Leave was denied.

On 27 May 2001 Neil declared bankruptcy. This was because he was unable to pay his legal fees and Fayed’s costs. These amounted to a staggering GBP 3 million. Being a bankrupt this forfended practicing at the bar or being an MP. Neil vowed that Fayed would not get a penny. All his earnings went to his goodwife because she was not bankrupt. He was discharged from bankruptcy three years later.

On 30 March 2000 Neil went on Da Ali G Show which was then brand new. It was hosted by Sacha Baron-Cohen in his persona of Ali G – a racially ambivalent shell suit wearing educationally subnormal rude boy, capo of the West Staines Massive who poses as a petty drug dealer but in fact comes from a boringly bourgeois background. In it Ali G proffers a cannabis cigarette to Neil which he happily smoked.

In a later edition of Da Ali G Show the guest was Mohammed Fayed. In it Ali G asked the Egyptian shopkeeper what he would say to Neil Hamilton if Neil were there. Fayed replied, ‘’Nothing. To me he is nothing.’’ Ali G then claimed that Neil had said he had seen Fayed wearing women’s lingerie. Fayed denied it and said ‘’he is the one who is doing that. He is very well known for that.’’ Ironically Neil did appear in ladies undergarments years later as part of a theatrical production. That was the Rocky Horror Show where he wore high heels and a basque.

There were still some political groups who were keen to hear from Neil. The Springbok Club invited Neil to address them. The club was for South Africans resident in the Home Counties. They displayed the apartheid era South African colours. Mr. Hamilton said he was pleased to speak in front of the ‘’true flag of South Africa.’’ Leftists took it as an endorsement of racialism.

After 2001 the Hamilton’s had to rebuild their financial position. They appeared on numerous quiz shows. They were on celebrity ‘Who wants to be a millionaire?’ to raise money for charity. When they underperformed Christine was visibly distressed at having let down needy people.

The couple appeared on posh nosh and other shows.

Neil and Christine traveled to the Republic of Ireland because they were invited on The Late, Late Show. The show was the most popular chat show on Radio Telefis Eireann (RTE) which is the Irish Republic’s principal channel. On RTE they were interviewed by the late Gay Byrne. Gabriel ‘Gay’ Bryne was Ireland’s foremost presenter for decades. Before going on air the couple had addressed the Law Society of University College Dublin (UCD). There were plenty UCD law undergraduates in the studio audience and they afforded the Hamilton’s a very hearty welcome.

Neil wrote an enthralling booked titled Great Political Eccentrics. He also penned another engrossing tome called Politics’ Strangest Characters. Did Neil write whereof he knew? He has never been accused of normality.

The Hamilton’s sold their Cheshire home for GBP 1.25 million. That was a very tidy sum at the time more like GBP 3 million in the values of 2023.

Upon selling their Cheshire domicile the Hamilton’s shifted to Hullavington, Wiltshire in October 2004.

In When Louis Met the Hamilton’s, Neil said that he and Christine were ‘’professional objects of curiosity.’’ Some said they were a circus act.

While on When Louis Met the Hamilton’s, Neil is show exercising in Hyde Park. As he said himself he was not bad for a 51 year old man. He has never been fat.

In some shows Neil seemed himself. He was confident and garrulous as usual. On other shows he appeared to be stiff and inhibited. No all media suited him.

MacIntyre is a show fronted by an eponymous Dubliner. Mr. MacIntyre had Neil on his show when he was helping the police. They winkled out wanted criminals by sending them letters saying they had won a competition and were due to be awarded a prize. As Neil was so often seen on game shows his presence lent this cover story some credibility.

Christine acquired herself a richly deserved reputation for being an outrageous flirt. No man was safe! Women of Britain: lock up your sons! And fathers and grandfathers. In spite of her pantherine sexuality, in fairness to her, no one has ever suggested that her behaviour has gone beyond mere coquetry.

Christine and Neil often appeared in pantomimes. It turned out that they had an exceptional gift for acting. They became a stable of quiz shows. They were on the Weakest Link hosted by Anne Robinson and on Ready Steady Cook. Neil competed on a celebrity edition of Mastermind on 26 December 2004. In 2005 Neil went on 18 Stone of Idiot and he danced in a Perspex box while the morbidly obese comedian Johnny Vegas and someone else poured buckets of fish over him. The price of political failure was not too high!

The couple appeared on Loose Women. Neil said the secret of his marriage’s success was ‘’I find we get on very well if I do exactly as I am told.’’

The Guardian dubbed Neil ‘’an all-purpose Z list celebrity.’’ He was perceived as an unpolitical figure. But the Noughties he was famous for being famous. He may never has asked cash for questions. By 2000 he was being questioned for cash.

Christine Hamilton went on Have I got news for you? The satirical news quiz show. The host mercilessly lampooned the Hamilton’s. It paid their fee in brown paper envelopes. This was an allusion to how Fayed claimed he had paid Neil.

Louis Theroux then did a show called ‘when Louis met’ and he usually encountered extraordinary freaks. Louis Theroux is the British born son of the celebrated American travel writer Paul Theorux. Louis is a skinny, bespectacled, so self-assured that he is soft-spoken and unassuming chap who was educated at Westminster and Oxford. He is a man over whom women swoon.  In 2000 he did one with Neil and Christine Hamilton.

Neil blazed a trail. He was the very first ex-politician to become a star of reality TV. Since then others have sought to reinvent themselves as media figures.

In 2003 Nadine Milroy-Sloan, the false accuser, was awarded a three year prison sentence. It was a disgracefully light sentence bearing in mind the far longer sentence that would have been given to Neil had he been wrongfully convicted. She was found guilty of perverting the course of justice.

Max Clifford who had represented Miss Milroy-Sloan paid Neil a sum of money in compensation. Part of the agreement was that the figure be kept secret.

Milroy-Sloan was a habitual liar. In 2014 she was again imprisoned for falsely accusing her ex-boyfriend of threatening her with a sword.

In the summer of 2000 Neil and Christine Hamilton was falsely accused of the rape of a woman. On 10 August 2001 the couple was arrested pursuant to a rape investigation.

Christine said that this accusation was ‘’lies on stilts’’. Indeed the couple had probative evidence that they were miles away from the scene of the alleged crime at the material time. They were dining with Derek Laud who corroborated their alibi. When the investigation started the couple were being filmed for When Louis met the Hamilton’s which was part of a series wherein Louis Theroux met interesting freaks At first Louis was entirely unaware of the rape allegation. In the back of a Range Rover Neil said that they had a story for Louis and most people would charge him extra for it but that they were giving it to Louis for free when Neil dropped a bombshell saying that they had been false accused of rape.

 The Sunday Times wrote ‘’they deserve less sympathy than most’’ but acknowledged that the couple had been blackguarded. Christine read the article aloud on the reality TV show When Louis met the Hamilton’s.

Their calumniator was subsequently awarded a three year prison sentence. The publicist who did most to disseminate these utterly bogus claims was Max Clifford. Clifford was a Labour donor who later went to prison for sex crimes.

Neil and Christine went into writing.

 Great British political eccentrics is a very readable book by Neil. He is a soi-disant eccentric. In it he featured Nabbaro, Screaming Lord Sutch, Roy Jenkins and others. Neil had little sympathy for Lord Roy Jenkins whom he lampooned. Lord Jenkins of Hillhead was a Welsh Labourite who sat for an English seat. He was the Home Secretary who shepherded through a piece of legislation that has killed over ten million British children. He later split from Labour to found the Social Democratic Party (SDP). His splitting the anti-Tory vote handed the entire 1980s to the Conservative Party. Thanks Roy! He later became Chancellor of Oxford University.

Neil later wrote a thoroughly engrossing tome called Politics’ Strangest Characters. In this book he mused on the curious case of Treibitsch Lincoln. The weird and wonderful Lincoln was born into a Jewish family in Hungary. After studying at the Royal Hungarian Academic of Dramatic art he moved to the United Kingdom. He managed to have himself selected as a Liberal candidate in 1910 and was returned to Parliament. He sat there only between January and December 1910. 1910 is the only year bar 1974 in which the United Kingdom held two general elections. Lincoln’s story grew ever more bizarre. He ended up in Tibet in the 1940s where he died – possibly poisoned by German agents.

Christine published a tome titled the bumper book of Great British battleaxes.

Neil appeared in numerous shows. They have acted in pantomimes.

In 2002 the Hamilton’s resigned from the Conservative and Unionist Party after 35 years of stalwart service. They joined the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP). Nigel Farage was then one of the most prominent UKIP Members of the European Parliament. Farage recalled luncheon with the Hamilton’s. He claimed that half way through he felt a hand on his knee. It was Christine! She was a notorious man eater. It is a fate that befell even me. She ruffled my hair and twittered ‘’oh what a lovely boy you are.’’

Christine forged a media career in her own right. She has been a columnist and a television reviewer. She has been on countless talk shows. She was a star turn in I’m a celebrity get me out of here wherein she was exiled to the Australian jungle for a few weeks.

In 2003 the Hamilton’s were invited to address the sixth form of Oundle School. Their car broke down and they were unable to make it. The school wanted them so badly that it arranged another occasion for them to speak. In his oration Neil said that there was a certain level below which support for the Conservatives would not go. Rock bottom was about 30%. He made disobliging remarks about Conservative leaders – Hague and Iain Duncan Smith IDS. IDS was such a lamentable choice for leader that people joked his initials stood for ‘’in deep shit.’’

Ironically Neil had far more influence outside Parliament than he had inside it.

UKIP was keen that a household name stand for Parliament. Neil and Christine declined to do so. They said ‘’we’ve done politics.’’ They needed to earn some money and buy themselves a decent house. This they eventually succeeded in doing. They purchased a home in Wiltshire.

In 2004 Neil and Christine attended an event in Oxford to commemorate the 60^th anniversary of D Day. The fete was held in the, alas and alack, now defunct pub called the Far from the Madding Crowd on Friar’s Entry. It was organized by Rev Fr David Johnson. Present were fifty persons including the Canadian High Commissioner (‘’call me Mel’’) and the morbidly obese and bearded Luxembourgish Ambassador straight from central casting.

Neil is never short of an opinion. He said he exalts David Lloyd George as the first Welshman to rise to the office of Prime Minister and one who made the political weather for a generation. That is despite Neil disagreeing with Lloyd George’s collectivist policies which paved the way for socialism.

Tony Blair attracts particular hostility and disdain from Neil. He scorns Blair’s so called ethical foreign policy and believe that Iraq War was calamitous.

In 2006 the Hamilton’s released a song for the Football World Cup. It was titled ‘England are Jolly Dee’. That was notwithstanding neither of them caring a fig about the sport and Neil is not actually English. Nor were either of them remotely musical. Full marks for effort!

In 2008 Neil and Christine founded Vixen Consultants Limited. This dealt with their media appearance. It trades under the name of Vixen Consultants. Neil is company secretary.

By the 2010s the Hamilton’s star was waning. The days of the 1990s when they had wall to wall coverage (whether wanted or unwanted) were over. They were all but unknown to the junior generation. It was at this point that Neil decided to throw his hat into the political ring once more.

In September 2011 Neil went to UKIP’s autumn conference. Nigel Farage was then leading the party. Farage endorsed him to stand for election to the National Executive Committee of the party. Neil was elected on 1 November 2011. He then served as deputy chairman of UKIP. Neil later became campaign director in April 2014. In May 2014 he sought to be elected in Wandsworth London Borough Council. He stood for St Mary’s ward. There were 9 candidates and Neil came a distant 8^th. London is not fertile soil for UKIP. The British capital is one of the most ardently Europhile areas in the country.

Arron Banks was the main UKIP financial backer. In private emails he dubbed Neil ‘’a corrupt old Tory’’

In 2014 Neil provoked wrath once again when he said that decent BNP voters were turning to UKIP. The British National Party as recently as the 1990s was an openly white supremacist party which sought to deprive non-white Britons of their British citizenship and expel them. It had denied the Holocaust and stoked odium against Muslims. Some say there is no such thing as a decent BNP voter. But it is an objective statement of fact that quite a few people who formerly voted BNP then cast their ballots for UKIP.

On 5 May 2016 Neil stood to be a member of what was then styled the National Assembly for Wales. UKIP was riding high because of the Brexit referendum. Neil was elected as a list Member of the Senedd (MS) for Mid and West Wales. Senedd is the Welsh word for ‘parliament’. He soon became the leader of the UKIP faction in the Welsh Assembly. The Welsh Assembly was subsequently renamed the Welsh Parliament in 2020. 7 UKIP MS’s were elected to the Welsh Assembly in 2016. All of them came in via the regional list system. UKIP never had anyone elected to Cardiff for a constituency.

Just five days after being elected to the Welsh Assembly, Neil was elected leader of UKIP in the assembly. He ousted Nathan Gill. Farage was the leader of the party and criticized the move. UKIP should not be fighting UKIP. Neil said Farage should not interfere in an internal Welsh matter and said that Farage was throwing a tantrum. Neil reminded the public that Farage was a Member of the European Parliament for South-East England and had never even stood for election in Wales.

In that legislature Neil continued to vocalise his forthright views. He said he was immensely gratified to be serving in the Land of my fathers – calling to mind the Welsh patriotic song. He was the only MS not to reside in the principality. Bigots tried to exploit this to portray him as somehow an alien and unfit to represent a region of Wales.

Nathan Gill was so dischuffed at being ousted by Neil that Gill left UKIP. He sat as an independent.

Neil made a barnstorming maiden speech in the Welsh Assembly. He also dubbed Kirsty Williams and Leanne Wood ‘’concubines’’ and said they were in a harem. Feminists were not best pleased. The talentless ex-social worker Leanne Wood was a Plaid Cymru MS and later became leader of the party. Stroppy, far left, eurofanatic, politically correct, anti-monarchist, bigoted and viciously intolerant – la Wood was not exactly Neil’s cup of cha.

A loony leftist MS named Eluned Morgan said that Brexit would hurt the poorest most. Neil Hamilton unkindly blurted out ‘’suicide’s an option.’’ The Presiding Officer called upon Neil to say sorry. He declined to do so, ‘’what is there to apologise for? What was unparliamentary about the remark?’’ In the end he said, ‘’I apologise for whatever remark I am supposed to have made.’’

Neil courted controversy in 2018 by speaking up for the late Enoch Powell. Powell had been the Conservative MP for Wolverhampton South-West and later an Ulster Unionist MP for Down South. Powell was notorious for his 1968 Rivers of Blood oration in which he said that non-white immigration was an existential threat to the United Kingdom. Powell was defended by Neil and said that Powell was no ghoul. Neil said that while large scale racial violence that Powell had forecast had not transpired, Powell was correct inasmuch as social change had been wrought by mass immigration and it was unwanted by most of the UK populace. Neil said that Powell was right to speak up for ordinary people when the elite chose to disregard these well-founded concerns.

Leanne Wood then denounced Neil saying that he was keeping racism alive. A Labour assemblyman said that Neil’s remarks were outrageous.

In 2019 Neil stood in a by-election in Newport West. He came third and polled a respectable 8.6%. Newport West had been a Labour seat for a century.

In 2020 the BLM movement began to demand that some statutes be taken down in Wales when the statute was a likeness of someone who had been involved in the slave trade. BLM wanted a statue of Mr. Pickton removed from Cardiff City Hall and Pickton Street renamed. They also sought the removal of another statue in Carmarthen. To Neil’s eternal credit he refused to be morally blackmailed by the racism industry.

Neil vociferously argued that the statue ought to remain in situ and that Pickton Street retain its name. He denounced BLM as Marxist and said it aimed at the erasure of Wales’ heritage. BLM proposed to put a statue of George Floyd in room of Pickton. Floyd was murdered by the police in the USA. Neil accused Floyd of being a drug peddler.

Unfortunately there is a rising tide of far left bigots demanding the abolition of British national pride. Neil set his face like flint against these socialists seditionists.

In 2020 Freddy Vachha, the UKIP leader, was forced out. Neil became acting leader of UKIP. He later became its substantive leader.

In 2021 Neil was the only UKIP representative other than local councilors.

In 2021 in the election to the Welsh Parliament, Neil chose not to seek re-election in Mid and West Wales. Instead he stood in South Wales East. It was possible a mistake. He was top of UKIP’s regional list.

BBC Wales held a main leaders’ debate. However. They did not invite the UKIP leader on saying that it was a minor party. Neil was invited to speak in a minor leaders’ debate alongside the leaders of the Green Party and Reform UK.

Neil stood in Islwyn. This was the onetime Labour leader Neil Kinnock’s former bailiwick. But Hamilton performed worse than the other Neil! He polled only 507 votes – coming 6^th.

All UKIP politicians failed to be elected to the Welsh Parliament.

In 2018 Neil was himself pushed out as UKIP leader in the Welsh Assembly. He was supplanted by Caroline Jones.

In 2018 the then leader of UKIP Gerard Batten said that a vote would be held to elect the UKIP leader in Wales. Whoever won would lead the party’s delegation in the Welsh Assembly and would be the Cymric voice of the party. Gareth Bennett MS, Miss Jones and Neil Hamilton all contested it. Bennett won. Nonetheless, Hamilton said he respected Bennett and would cooperate with him.

On 12 September 2020 Neil was elected leader of the UK Independence Party. He won 498 votes out of 631. That meant 79% of the total vote. He defeated John Poynton. Membership had collapsed. Most talented and ambitious UKIPers had decamped to the newly founded Brexit Party (now called Reform UK). That included the sometime leader of UKIP – Nigel Farage.

When Neil took over UKIP was in poor shape. The membership had fallen off a cliff. Its finances were shocking. As Brexit had happened it seemed that UKIP had lost its raison d’etre. People were bored rigid of the EU issue. But Neil insisted that the Tory Brexit had been half-hearted at best. In spite of Neil’s most valiant efforts, UKIP is largely a one man band. It has trouble garnering much media attention. Neil does his level best to keep the UKIP show on the road. But the membership is elderly, donations are paltry and public opinion is shifting towards seeking readmission to the EU. In truth the party shall probably not long survive him.

In 2021 Neil was ‘liberated’ in his own words from the Welsh Parliament.

In 2022 he attended the memorial service of Fr. David Johnson.

When Brexit came Neil believed that the United Kingdom had benefitted precious little therefrom. He wanted a hard Brexit and argued that the United Kingdom has not used its Brexit freedoms fully. Nonetheless, he was impressed by Boris Johnson’s drive and ambition. Neil has thought aloud about rejoining the Conservative Party but concluded, ‘’I am a bit long in the tooth to do that.’’

The UKIP position on Ukraine is that Ukraine must free itself from Russian aggression and tyranny. The United Kingdom must back Kyiv to the hilt.

Neil expressed his disagreement with reparations for slavery. He said it is ludicrous. He also disagrees with taking down statues of those who trafficked in slaves. This would lead to the razing of all Roman architecture.

By 2022 Christine had had enough of being in the media spotlight. She voiced her desire to leave all that behind and to finally regain some privacy. A quarter of a century as a public figure has been more than enough.

One of the happiest and most marvelous things Neil has achieved and the thing that has sustained him through many disasters, is his marriage. Adversity appears only to have drawn the couple closer when it would have sundered many other marriages. It is surely one of the most resoundingly successful celebrity marriages of the present day. The Hamilton’s have plenty of sworn enemies. But even their most implacable foes have never accused the Hamilton’s of being unfaithful to the marital bed. What extraordinary serendipity that these star crossed lovers should have met so young

Did Neil ask cash for questions? He has never wavered in his denials in over 29 years. Perhaps finally he ought to be believed.

A peerage for this political titan is long overdue.

Neil Hamilton

His own man?

Showman?

Questions for cash?

The greatest prime minister we never had.

National treasure

Hero

Saviour

Genius of Brexit

Neil Hamilton is one of the most famous or perhaps infamous ex-MPs of modern times. Though he was a passionate parliamentarian it is a curious twist of fate that he had achieved far greater sway once he lost his seat. Barrister, university lecturer, journalist, campaigner, MP, Assembly Member, teacher, quiz show contestant, talk show guest, actor, interviewer, controversialist, contarian, transvestite, bon vivant, author, media factotum extraordinaire and all round national treasure – Neil is truly one of a kind. Ebullient, amiable, affable, gallant, garrulous, telegenic, bankrupt, bankable, intelligent, elegant, avaricious, dapper, debonair, sanguine, bonhomous, irrepressible, innovative, opinionated, outspoken, unbreakable, querulous, quixotic, resilient, unflappable, enervating, disputatious, shameless, faithful, always immaculately attired and seldom captious – Neil is a man of many parts. I have long been adazzle by his gifts and his chequered story. How can one possibly do justice to such a multitalented man whose life has had such triumphs and such travails? There has scarcely be a dull moment.

Notwithstanding being brutalized by the left wing gutter press for years, Neil never once lost his composure. He defied the insults and rose above them. He never resorts to vulgarities. Throughout his travails, ever bore himself with a dignity that it would profit others to study.

Given the slings and arrows of outrageous reportage that Neil suffered it is inexplicable that he never resorted to contumely or Anglo-Saxonisms. He is a man not given to wild emotion.

A man of prodigious gifts and endless energy yet he never achieved the high ministerial office to which he aspired. He was too incautious, farouche and perhaps unembarrassable for his own good. As one ex-Tory MP said to me of Neil, ‘’he had no sense of danger’’. Neil is certainly no Westminster cardboard cut-out.

For 20 years Neil was one of Britain’s most colourful and instantly recognizable characters. That is all the more surprising given that he is undemonstrative. He is not visually arresting. Neither unusually tall nor short – Neil is not obese nor skinny. His dress sense is a little old fashioned. Yet somehow he garnered endless media attention – much of it unsought and even unwanted.

Tatton was the constituency that Neil graced with his presence from 1983 to 1997. It would be fair to say that he is not universally adored in his former Cheshire stomping ground. He later brought levity and controversy to the once staid National Assembly for Wales. He now enjoys an uncharacteristically quiet retirement in rural Wiltshire

Neil’s political career was dogged by allegations of cash for questions that refused to go away. He made some powerful enemies. A meretricious Egyptian billionaire Mohammed Fayed was a deadly foe of his. The Guardian newspaper was hellbent on bringing Neil down. Most of Fleet Street was extremely hostile to Neil in the 1990s. A lesser man would have cracked under the strain. Seeing vicious headlines about his splashed across the front pages of several newspaper day after day was more than enough to destroy the average person. But Neil is so much more than a mere normal man.

The 1997 election was a seismic shift from Conservative to Labour. But during Labour’s landslide election one seat attracted more media coverage than any other. That was Tatton where Neil stood and lost.

There was a time in the late 90s and early Noughties when Neil Hamilton was a household name. You could not turn on your telly without seeing Neil and Christine.

Background

Mostyn Neil Hamilton was born on 9 March 1949 in the United Kingdom. He has always been known by his middle name: Neil. Mostyn is a place in Wales and perhaps significantly this name is de-emphasised like Neil’s Welsh heritage.

It was in 4 Trelyn, Lane, Fleur de-Lis that Neil was born. The house was that of Neil’s paternal aunt. Fleur de-Lis that boasts being Neil’s birthplace. It is in the district of Bedwellty in Monmouthshire. It is not far from the small town of Blackwood. Monmouthshire a county that has passed back and forth between Wales and England. It is the most anglicized part of Wales. The illegitimate son of Charles II was styled the Duke of Monmouth: he of the ill-fated 1685 Rebellion. But apart from that Monmouth and Monmouthshire are names one seldom hears.

Some doubted that Monmouth is Welsh at all. The Welsh Guards once advertised for recruits saying they must be from Wales or Monmouthshire impliedly saying that Monmouthshire is not in Wales. When Neil was eleven they moved to Ammanford, Carmarthen. Neil never particularly stressed his Welsh identity. He was always a committed unionist.

Bedwellty has now been assigned to the County of Gwent.

Neil was born is very close to Abertillery: a rock solid Labour constituency that he was to contest 15 years later. His birthplace is also close to other places that are legendary for their socialist fervor: Islwyn and Ebbw Vale. The latter being the seat of Welsh Labour’s most famous son Nye Bevan and later the seat of the sometime leader of the Labour Party: Michael Foot. Bedwellty became part of the Islwyn constituency that was later represented by Neil Kinnock who was leader the Labour Party from 1983-92. Kinnock was known as the Welsh windbag for his verbose and tedious oratory. He and Neil Hamilton were not in sympathy. When Kinnock was sent upstairs to the House of Lords he styled himself Baron Kinnock of Bedwellty.

The appeal of Labour to those in coalmining communities is not hard to understand. Before Labour was founded as the Labour Representation Committee in 1894 conditions for most people in South Wales were grim indeed. It was one of the most poverty-stricken regions of the United Kingdom. Most people left school at 12. Men toiled for decades in horrific conditions underground for poverty pay. Coal mining was extraordinarily dangerous. Shafts collapsed and sometimes there were gas explosions. Dozens were killed every years and many were injured. Many of the injured could not afford treatment. There was no disability benefit. Workhouses still existed. The aristocrats who owned the coalmines were filthy rich despite not doing a day’s work. It all seemed grossly unjust. Labour promised to make life better for the great majority of people who were poor. There was an awful lot of avoidable suffering and Labour wanted to alleviate this. The Conservatives and Liberals offered no such solutions. Their MPs were mostly upper class or middle class. By contrast Labour MPs of that generation were usually identifiably working class. By the time Neil was born Labour was building the welfare state. It had made life significantly better for the majority of people. Back then 65% of people called themselves working class. Class identity was strong. People aligned behind political parties often on a class basis.

Disraeli’s dictum is that the Church of England is the Tory Party at prayer. This was never accurate but there was a grain of truth to it. Note that for centuries the Anglican Church in Wales was known as the Church of England. This irked many as disrespectful to Wales.  It is now called the Church in Wales not the Church of Wales. By the time of Neil’s birth most Welsh people were Nonconformists of some stripe or other: Baptists, Presbyterians, Methodists, Congregationalists or even like David Lloyd George – Disciples of Christ. Very few working class Welsh people were Church of England. Being an active Nonconformist correlated with voting for Labour, the Liberals or even Plaid Cymru (the Party of Wales). The Church of England was said by Disraeli to be the Tory Party at prayer. This was inaccurate but contained a grain of truth.

The Hamilton’s lived in Wales where coalmining was the main industry. Neil’s father was the chief engineer for a mining company. Both his grandfathers had been down the mines. Though conditions in the pits were often ghastly it was relative handsomely remunerated. It was danger money.

The surname Hamilton relates to a town in the Scots Lowlands: Hamilton. There is indeed a Duke of Hamilton. There is a surname ‘Hamill’ as well.

The Britain that Neil grew up in was very different from today. In 1949 under 1% of the population was non-white. In Wales it was more like 0.1% and in Carmarthen even less than that. Back then being Irish was considered to be ethnically diverse. Most people had never eaten rice other than in rice pudding. Indian and Chinese restaurants were all but unknown. The Second World War was still a very recent memory. Almost all items were still rationed. The British Empire was extant and was assumed to have long way yet to run. There was National Service. This meant that young men had to do two years in the army, Royal Navy, Royal Marines or RAF. There were exemptions for conscientious objectors, the disabled, parliamentary candidates and doctors. Doctors could perform their service by providing medical care in the colonies. Before the Suez Crisis of 1956, the British Empire was assumed to have a long way yet to run. Men only a few years older than Neil did National Service but it was phased out in 1963 so Neil did not have to do it.

Labour had won a sweeping victory in 1945. Labour’s Attorney-general Sir Hartley Shawcross said, ‘’we are the masters now and not just for now but for a very long time to come.’’ It was widely forecast that the Conservatives would be out of office for a generation. It was to general astonishment that the Tories won office again in 1951. That was only by fluke since Labour won more votes but the vagaries of the first past the post system awarded more seats to the Conservative and Unionist Party.

In Neil’s childhood the Cold War was at its height. Capitalism was seriously questioned. There was thought to be a strong chance that communism would triumph.

The 1950s was a time of austerity at first. The United Kingdom was decidedly bland compared to today. It was only just recovering from the war. But rationing was being phased out the UK entered a sustained economic boom. Unemployment was very low, inflation was low and consumer goods were becoming ever more affordable. Strikes almost never occurred. Cars and televisions came within reach for the middle class. The working class had disposable incomes like never before. To people who remembered the Great Depression and the Second World War, the 1950s seemed splendid. The Prime Minister Harold Macmillan told people ‘’you’ve never had it so good.’’ Supermac was right. Yet relative poverty still existed. Foreign holidays were the preserve of the few, nay, the very few. Most Britons had never been on a plane. The remotest villages still did not have electricity in the 1950s. Most people still kept their houses warm in winter with coal and logs crackling on the hearth. Central heating was not the norm until the 1960s.

Despite the economy growing, 1950s Britain was monochromatic compared to today. Many Britishers thought that there was a better life to be had in sunnier climes. They had the automatic right to immigrate to Commonwealth countries such as Australia and South Africa. There was even the assisted passage scheme. The UK Government even sent orphans to Australia. Why was Britain trying to get rid of its people as it brought in people from the ‘New Commonwealth’ of Jamaica, Trinidad, Grenada, India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Tanzania and Kenya? The Commonwealth was very much the frame of reference. Few Britons thought of themselves as being European.

Unemployment was so low in fact that there was a paucity of workers in some regions and in certain sectors of the economy. This caused the Conservative Government to invite immigration from the Commonwealth and indeed colonies which back then still existed. Her Majesty’s Government specifically asked people from Caribbean countries and South Asia to move to the United Kingdom to work. One of those Conservative cabinet ministers who invited doctors and nurses from the West Indies to come and work in the UK was a certain John Enoch Powell!

Neil had grandparents living in Portsmouth.

Neil grew up in one of the most overwhelmingly pro-Labour areas of the UK. Neil was a born dissident. He loathed the idea that the state would control everything. Growing up in a small town run by a smug, corrupt and self-serving Labour council he saw the Conservatives as representing liberty. At the age of 15 Neil joined the Conservative and Unionist Party. It was a highly unusual move. It proves he is broadminded and even has moral courage. Labour had just come into office under Harold Wilson as Prime Minister. But was already a convinced anti-socialist. Neil has always been notable for his utter fealty to the House of Windsor.

Although Neil is Welsh he was brought up in an Anglophone family. He later learnt some Welsh though as he says himself he can only make ‘’a fair stab’’ at speaking the language. When he was at school Welsh was hardly ever taught. His education was conducted exclusively through the medium of English.

Something of Neil’s character may have come from him growing up middle class in a very working class town. His family was much better off than many of their neighbours. He regularly went to England to visit relatives. This emphasized in him the oneness of the United Kingdom. Therefore his Conservatism and his Unionism were not swimming against the tide quite as much as one may have imagined.

Growing up in a small town can induce the small town mentality. But it can also do the opposite. Neil is not timid and embraces cosmopolitanism.

As soon as Neil opened his mouth it was plain that he was given to ‘yappin’ to use the Cymro-English colloquialism. He was to make his life by talking.

At school Neil did well academically. However, he was no sportsman. His eccentricities did not make him popular. He was unafraid and paid a price for his outspokenness.  Despite attending a state school he did not acquire a Welsh accent but spoke Received Pronunciation. The only state educated Welshman who speaks with that accent from Neil’s generation is a Swansea grammar school boy – Michael Howard. Lord Howard was a Tory Home Secretary and later Leader of Her Majesty’s Most Loyal Opposition.

Neil passed his 11+. In those days children sat this exam in English and Maths. The top 20% went to grammar school and had some chance of going to university. In a grammar school pupils were taught subjects such as the sciences, ancient languages, modern languages and humanities subjects. They would sit Ordinary levels (O levels). They were the equivalent of GCSEs but were harder than ‘A’ levels are now. Then pupils could sit A levels aged 18. A levels were extremely challenging. Even a D grade was hard to get.

In 1963 only 4% of people went to university. But universities were expanding rapidly in the 1960s.

Those who did not pass the 11+ (80% of the population) went to a secondary modern where they would do some English and Maths and learn trades like woodwork, metalwork, sewing, cookery and suchlike before leaving school aged 16. Most people in the 1960s left school without any qualifications at all. There were plenty of jobs that did not require qualifications such as being a factory worker, farm labourer, navvy, janitor, joiner, shipbuilder, construction worker, miner, cleaner, shop assistant and so on. The UK still had a lot of mines, factories and shipyards in those days.

Though Wales was made about rugby, Neil was no rugger bugger. Nor indeed was he great shakes at any sport. He was often found with his nose in a book.

Amman Valley Grammar School was there Neil was educated. He did his O levels and A levels there.

University

University College Wales, Aberystwyth had the inestimable honour of educating Neil Hamilton. He is surely Aberystwyth’s most illustrious graduate. There he read economics and politics.

Many undergraduates professed the cloying and stultifying socialism of the Welsh section of the Labour Party. There were also blood red commies. Some of them adulated the most prolific mass murderers of all time such as Mao Zedong and Stalin. It was all in the name of compassion of course. For some leftists these communist tyrants were messianic.

The 1960s was a time of change. 60s teenagers were ‘’children of the revolution’’ as the song said. It was the era of the counterculture, the sexual revolution, flower power, hippies and the anti-war movement. Some couples started to live together before marriage. Unwed pregnancy was no longer quite as scandalous as it had been a decade earlier. Times they were a-changing, as Bob Dylan sang. But even then the counterculture was perhaps as not strongly felt in rural Wales as it was in Swinging London. Through all this upheaval Neil made a name for himself as a young fogey. Some young men grew their hair down to their shoulders and wore shaggy beards but Neil was always short back and sides and was always clean-shaven. He has always been delightfully contra mundum.

Neil was a baby boomer. Those born in the late 1940s are said to be a very optimistic generation. That is because from their birth life got better and better for decades. It was only when such people neared the age of 30 that the Western World started to encounter serious problems and stagnation.

By the 1960s the UK had emerged from the shadow of the Second World War. It appeared to be a time of rampant consumerism. Car ownership quadrupled in the decade. Items that had once been the preserve of only the middle class had become affordable for working class people – telephones and televisions.

The Vietnam Conflict war raging. The Cold War as at its height. There was an ideological clash in Britain too between left and right. Labour was officially on the side of the Free World in the Cold War. But there was a significant faction within Labour that did not support the Free World and felt more than a little sympathy for communist tyrannies. Many communists had joined the Labour Party. They were Trotskyites, Stalinists and Maoists. These comrades thought that the free market was evil, capitalism must be smashed and the Cold War was the West’s fault. Labour was forever enfeebling Her Majesty’s Armed Forces.

The prospect of nuclear war hung over the world like a sword of Damocles. The Cuban Missile Crisis had been but a few years before in 1963. The Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament organized ban the bomb marches. Quite a few Labour Party members wanted the United Kingdom to engage in unilateral nuclear disarmament and leave the UK vulnerable to a nuclear Holocaust without any means to defend itself.

Perhaps the defining characteristic of late 1960s radicalism was its vandalism. It wanted to tear down. Radical enmity towards Western civilization was all the more shocking because of the totalitarians that it looked to. Such nihilism horrified even Labour moderates.

When Neil went up to university there was a Labour Government. A short, soft-spoken, pensive, podgy, pipe-smoking Yorkshireman named Harold Wilson was Prime Minister. Though Labour had won a landslide majority in 1966 it became deeply unpopular just one year later when the Pound Sterling was severely devalued. The United Kingdom was withdrawing from South Arabia (Yemen). There were sanctions on Rhodesia (Zimbabwe) because of its Unilateral Declaration of Independence. Britain had twice been rejected in its bid to join the European Economic Community. There were protests and rising tensions in Northern Ireland.

The Conservative and Unionist Party was led by the uncharismatic bachelor Edward Heath. Heath’s uptight manner, uninspiring personality, wooden oratory and emotional unintelligence led one Tory image maker to say ‘’we have to try to turn Ted into a human being.’’ It proved to be mission impossible. Edward Heath was square in face and square in personality.

While Neil was at university, in the summer of 1969, Prince Charles was invested as Prince of Wales in a magnificent ceremony in Caernarvon Castle. The Secretary of State for Wales, George Thomas MP, had spoken some of the ceremony in Welsh. Thomas George Thomas went by his middle name ‘George’ but was jocularly known as ‘’Tommy Twice’’. George Thomas was later to go on to be Speaker of the House of Commons and was ennobled as Lord Tonypandy – taking the name of his quondam South Wales constituency that was not far from Neil’s natal place. As Lord Tonypandy was a passionate royalist and a committed euroscpetic he was one of the few Labour politicians whom Neil held in high regard.

The investiture of the Prince of Wales was an occasion for Her Britannic Majesty to come to Wales. That was something that did not happen all that often. In the 1960s celebrity culture was only just starting. The House of Windsor was still unquestioningly exalted by almost everyone in the United Kingdom. The 20 year old Prince Charles was held in high esteem.  All the Welsh notables attended eminent persons from across the Commonwealth of Nations were there.

Her Majesty Queen had dubbed her firstborn son Prince of Wales. There had been no Prince of Wales for decades before that. The investiture simply strengthened Neil’s monarchist convictions. There was a handful of racist Anglophobic ultra-nationalist headbangers in Wales who objected to the prince. They tried to ruin the wonderful day for all decent people. But His Royal Highness Prince Charles went on a five day tour of the Principality and was very rapturously received by his mother’s adoring subjects. It seemed to confirm just how popular the monarchy was.

The same separatist bigots in Wales had been trying to wreck the solemnity of God Save the Queen when it was sung at Cardiff Arms Park before rugby matches by jeering through it. It was grossly insulting to the average Welshman who was a fervent British patriot. Coming so soon after the Second World War it was also spitting on the grave of Welshmen who had valiantly laid down their lives for the United Kingdom. These shameful tantrums by separatists in Wales underscored to Neil how distasteful, small-minded and spiteful separatism is. He has always been a firm unionist.

Some of the separatists in Wales turned violent and called themselves the Free Wales Army (FWA). Fortunately they did not manage to kill a single person.

Neil has always punctured the pretensions of these anti-democratic separatists who professed to speak for Wales.

Back then some youngsters affected grunge. But not Neil. He often wore a smart tweed jacket or blazer even on the weekend and he began sport bowties. It is a confection that never left him. He has always been an aesthete. Who has ever see him dress down?

Neil took a degree in 1970.

He was also a mad monarchist.

He later took an MA in the economics and politics in 1975.

Neil was a well-known member of the Federation of Conservative Students (FCS). He joined in 1968 and left in 1974. He was elected to represent FCS. In this capacity he went to Italy to attend a conference of Movimiento Sociale Italiano (MSI). MSI was largely regarded as a continuation of the Fascist Party. Some joked that MSI stood for Mussolini Sei Immortale (‘’Mussolini you are immortal’’). This error of judgement did not harm Neil’s career overmuch. Conservative abhor fascism as a racist and totalitarian species of socialism. Fascism is about social engineering and the abolition of liberty. It is a creed that is profoundly anti-conservative.

In the 1960s there was a spirited debate surrounding the European Economic Community (EEC). The EEC was the precursor to the European Union (EU). The EEC was often known was the ‘common market’ to make it seem less threatening. Young and hip people tended to be Europhiles. Neil perhaps typically decided to be a Eurosceptic. He was in the Anti-Common Market League (ACML). Many in that organisations believe that the Commonwealth of Nations was still a force in the world. If the United Kingdom acceded to the EEC it would be abandoning the Commonwealth. ACML warned of a European Parliament, British law been subordinate to European law, the European Court of Justice overriding Her Majesty’s courts, the European Commission functioning in effect as a cabinet and the advent of a European single currency. The predictions of the ACML were dismissed as deranged jeremiads. But ACML turned out to be a Cassandra.

Always independent minded and never attune to the zeitgeist, Neil called for large scale privatization. This was very audacious at the height of Butskellism. Butskellism comes from the names of the two post war Chancellors of the Exchequer Richard Austen (‘’Rab’’_ Butler who was a Conservative and Hugh Gaitskell who was a Labour man. Butskellism suggested that there was a consensus – a mélange of socialism and capitalism. The mixed economy appeared to be the Aristotelean mean. Harold Macmillan had argued for this via media since the 1930s and later published a book on it The Middle Way. Few dared question such shibboleths at the time. In a sense Neil was a decade ahead of his party’s thinking. He was a Thatcherite before even Thatcher herself! He had no truck with the flabby compromises of Butskellism. Neil never does anything by half measures.

In the early 1970s France, the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg and West Germany were all more prosperous than the UK. Remember in those days Germany was divided into East and West. The argument ran that these countries were all members of the EEC. If the United Kingdom were to join then it too could share in this. Italy was in the EEC but lagged behind. Denmark and the Republic of Ireland were also in accession talks with Brussels. Could joining the EEC bring the Northern Ireland conflict to an end? As it turns out there was fat chance of that.

In 1973 the United Kingdom joined the European Economic Community. Neil was adamantly against. In 1975 a referendum under the Labour Government of Harold Wilson ratified the British Government’s decision post-factum. Neil then bowed to the will of the people and said that the EEC had achieved his acceptance. Decades later Europhiles were not so democratic when a referendum did not go their way.

The British Conservative Monday Club was very much on the right of the Tory Party.  Its foes – and they were legion – called it racist and far right. The Monday Club had that name because of the Monday in 1961 in which Harold Macmillan had addressed the South African Parliament. Macmillan’s oration in Cape Town was known as the ‘winds of change’ speech. In it he said there was a wind of change blowing through Africa and adjustments needed to be made in view of this. ‘Like it or not the growth of nationalism is a political fact.’ Macmillan’s message was that the white minority in South Africa could no longer keep power to the exclusion of the 80%+ of the populace who were of other races. Macmillan was delivering a message on behalf of the Commonwealth of Nations. The multiracial Commonwealth was growing louder in its denunciations of South Africa’s apartheid system of racial discrimination. Macmillan’s speech had not been cleared in advance with the South African Government. The Prime Minister of South Africa Hendrik Frensch Verwoerd was present in the chamber when Macmillan delivered his address. Verwoerd was called upon to respond. The Dutch-born politician was aghast and professed himself almost speechless and what he considered to be an astoundingly breach of protocol and an unwarranted intrusion into South Africa’s domestic affairs. The Monday Club was founded in opposition to Macmillan’s policy. It argued that majority rule was premature in Rhodesia (now named Zimbabwe) and South Africa. It thought that Tory policy had been generally limp wristed for decades and needed to become far firmer.

The Monday Club said that apartheid should be supported and that the United Kingdom should recognise the illegal white minority regime in Rhodesia as a legitimate government. The Monday Club called for funding for voluntary repatriation of our Commonwealth cousins. It said that non-white British citizens should be offered money to ‘go home.’ In fairness the law provided such funding right up until well into the years of Tony Blair’s administration. Very few ethnic minority Britons took up the offer. The Monday Club was vociferously anti-socialist. It also demanded the annihilation of the IRA. As the majority of people wanted the death penalty to be restored the Monday Club said it was democratic and logical that the supreme sanction be brought back. At best it was Toryism on steroids. Others called it crypto-fascist.

There was much polemic against the Monday Club. People inveighed against it as being an apologist for the white supremacist regime in Pretoria. To be fair, there was a measure of veracity in that accusation.

Neil noted the hypocrisy and emptiness of this self-regarding moralizing about South Africa. Virtually every country in Africa was undemocratic. Yet only one was singled out for a chorus of execration. And that was for manifestly racist reasons. It was because the South African Government was white. People put Nelson Mandela on a pedestal. Who was the Mandela of Zaire or Ethiopia or Chad or Uganda or a host of other slaughterhouse states all across the continent? No political prisoner would last 28 months incarceration in another African country let alone 28 years. This tu quoque argument did not convince many.

Neil contested the chairmanship of FCS but was defeated by David Davis. Davis was then at Warwick University studying Business. He went on to be a prominent Tory leadership contender and cabinet minister.

Seeking gainful employment, Neil found work as a teacher at St John’s College in Southsea in 1973. That was near his grandparents.  While teaching he read for the bar. In 1978 Neil found a new job at Hatfield Polytechnic in Hertfordshire. It is now called the University of Hertfordshire. Neil continued to teach there part-time as a struggling junior barrister. He gave up teaching in July 1982 and concentrated fully on the bar.

At Cambridge, Neil founded the Eldon League. It was named in honour of the notoriously reactionary early 19^th century Lord Chancellor – the Earl of Eldon. Born plain ‘John Scott’, Lord Eldon was the son of a highly successful Newcastle coal merchant. He then matriculated at University College, Oxford. He was a Tory ultra. He said that representative government was the opposite of what the United Kingdom had. Eldon was never happier than when awarding political dissidents 14 years transportation to Australia with penal servitude or indeed sentencing malfeasants to hang. He vigorously defended slavery and said that grand larceny should be punished by death even in the case of children. He is ridiculed in Shelley’s Masque of Anarchy ‘Eldon big ears had on.’ Astonishingly he has statuary honour in his old Oxford college. By a curious coincidence this is also Shelley’s college (University College, Oxford) and he is also honoured with a fine marble statue.

The Eldon League was a decidedly unserious right wing drinking club. They held picnics and garden parties. The Eldonians would spray each other with champagne and engage in suchlike jolly japes. They celebrated such crucial events as the King of Swaziland’s birthday. It attracted a quaint and faintly fruitcake crowd. They published a jocular manifesto demanding that plastic be outlawed and internal combustion engines be abandoned. Insofar as possible the only used train and horse drawn carriages as their conveyances when travelling to and from Eldonian events. It was seen as being against the entire 20^th century. Its member dressed up in anachronistic garb. Neil styled himself by the characteristically antiquated title of Imperial Prior. The Eldon League was a menagerie of eccentrics. But in it, for once, Neil did not seem like an odd fish.

Neil’s atavism was perhaps not quite as unusual as it might seem. In the 1970s a show aired on television called Good Old Days. In the show people went to the theatre togged out in Edwardian clobber. They were treated to pre-First World music hall acts. Some of the elderly theatregoers will have been children in the Edwardian era. In the 1970s Britain was on the skids. The empire had been dissolved. Inflation eroded incomes, there was rising unemployment, rising crime and sinking national self-belief.  The country was palsied by strikes. There had been the three day weeks because coal was in such short supply that for a couple of months workplaces could only be provided with three days’ worth of electricity each week. There seemed to be no end to the cycle of stagnation and turmoil. The Ulster Conflict was raging with no end in sight. In Caledonia and in Cymru separatist sentiment had metastisised. Entry into the EEC had been deeply divisive.  The United Kingdom was the sick man of Europe. It seemed apt that Britain treat itself to one last dose of nostalgia for its zenith.

Whilst he was an undergraduate Neil was an active Conservative. At a young Conservative conference he met a lady of his age named Christine Holman. Miss Holman was a doctor’s daughter who was then studying sociology at the University of York. A romance blossomed. They have been inseparable ever since. Their motto is – we do things together.

Unlike Neil, Christine had grown up in one of the most fiercely Conservative places in the realm: rural Hampshire. She was a doctor’s daughter and spoke RP as one might expect someone to do who belonged to the southern English upper middle class.

While at York, Christine made some friends for life. They were Harvey Proctor and Michael Brown – about whom more later.

Christine worked as a secretary for a number of Conservative MPs. For a while she worked for Sir Gerald Nabarro. He was known for extravagant handlebar moustache and his stentorian voice with which he boomed out his outrageously racist beliefs: ‘’how would you like your daughter to marry a big buck n****** with the prospect of coffee coloured grandchildren?’’  Standing 6’4’’ and well-built, Nabarro was a former army physical fitness instructor and was unfailingly perfectly turned out in tailor made Saville Row suits. He had the most extraordinary presence. Sir Gerald and had become a self-made millionaire as a timber merchant. Gerald Nabarro’s voice was said to have been the loudest in the British army. And that’s really saying something! His saloon bar prejudices did his political career a power of good in the West Midlands.  That was Enoch Powell country. He love the monarchy and despised undergraduates. The permissive society was a particular bugbear of his.

Gerald Nabbaro was once had up in court on suspicion of dangerous driving. He was acquitted on the basis that it was not him but his secretary who was driving. Nabarro’s revolting racialism did not add lustre to the Tory diadem. In mitigation one might plead that he was a man of his era. Such rebarbative views were not uncommon in the 1960s. Moreover, the Latin word for black was more of a conversational word than a racial slur at the time.

Nabarro’s racist screeds are perhaps even more surprising considering that he belonged to a much persecuted ethnic minority himself. He was Jewish. But that Christine chose to work for him out of all the Conservative MPs shows poor judgement on her part. Was it not at the very least ethically suboptimal to work for a man who expectorated such detestable racial invective? How did his racist outbursts make the beleaguered black community feel? How did his loathing of mixed race children make them feel? Surely his racist diatribe aggravated racial animus, playground bullying and even heavy violence against non-white people in the United Kingdom.

In 1974 Neil was selected as a Prospective Conservative Parliamentary Candidate. He stood in Abertillery. This seat was in the mining area of South Wales. Of the 650 odd seats in the United Kingdom this was Labour’s safest. The result may be guessed. It was a dry run for a marginal seat next time.

Upon graduation Neil taught history for a while. He then decided that he wished to be called to the bar.

Neil went up to Cambridge to read law. Is college was Corpus Christi. As he already had a degree he was able to take a truncated programme. He did the two year course and received and LL.M. Even Neil’s worst enemy does not doubt his intellect.

While at Cambridge, Neil was active in the Cambridge Union. That is the debating society of Cambridge University.

In 1977 Neil was at the Tory Conference when it was addressed by a 16 year old Yorkshire schoolboy named William Hague. Ambitious young Tories were chanting ‘’bastard, bastard’’ because they were emerald with envy. What a flying start this boy had. Who could ever compete with that – addressing the conference aged only 16! Hague was to go on to be leader of the party and Foreign Secretary.

After 1976 the United Kingdom was led – or rather misled – by a Labour Prime Minister named James Callaghan. ‘Sunny Jim’ as his few fans called him was an amiable and ineffectual figure presiding over what one newspaper called ‘mounting chaos.’ There was strike after strike and seemingly endless inflation. James Callaghan came across as a kindly but pathetic grandfather. The public was thoroughly fed up after the Winter of Discontent – the strikes in late 1978 into early 1979. Notoriously as the gravediggers’ union took ‘industrial action’ for several weeks we could not even bury the dead.

As a wag noted, Callaghan was an Englishman with an Irish name who sat for a Welsh seat. Neil Hamilton is a Welshman with a Scottish name who sat for an English seat.

In 1979 Neil was selected as the Conservative candidate for Bradford North. It was a Labour seat but a marginal one. Bradford did not have a large Pakistani community at the time. British-Pakistanis tend heavily towards Labour. As the Labour Government was reviled for its lassitude, incompetence and decrepitude there was a very considerable chance that Neil could win in Bradford North. But in God’s Own County it a significant handicap that he was not a Yorkshireman. Yorkshire folk tend to regard those born outside the white rose county as an inferior breed. As he joked, ‘’I fought Bradford North and Bradford North fought back.’’

Called to the bar in 1979, Neil began his practice desultorily.

When he came down from Cambridge, Neil read for the bar. He was duly called to the bar. He practised in property law and taxation law. It was a lucrative area of practice.

In the 1980s there was some Thatcherite oomph. Inflation was falling. Consumerism was on the rise. The economy was growing at least in southern England – the Tory heartland. In the rest of the UK there was rising unemployment. It was the decade of big hair and small government. In 1982 the United Kingdom defeated Argentine aggression against the Falklands.

In the early 1980s Neil was the European and Parliamentary Director of the Institute of Directors.

In 1982 Argentina launched an illegal and unprovoked invasion of the Falkland Islands. That was despite almost everyone in the Crown Dependency wishing to remain British. Her Majesty’s Armed Forces duly liberated them. Neil was strongly of the belief that it was right to fight for freedom. He cannot be called a chauvinist or militarist. Some left wingers such as Tam Dalzell said that the Falklanders should be handed over to the fascist junta.

On 12 March 1983 Neil got some very good news. He was adopted as the prospective parliamentary candidate for Tatton. It was one of the safest Conservative constituencies in the realm. Neil’s luck was redoubled when two months later there was an early election.

Christine was the secretary of Michael Grylls MP for Chertsey at the time. You can guess which party he was in!

Into politics

Neil was always sartorially retro. Dressing as though he were born two generations earlier perhaps expressed a yearning for Britain’s imperial zenith. He never quite coincided with people of his age and region. Neil liked to wear three piece suits and had a taste for tweed. He often sported millinery long after it was fashionable.

In 1983 Tatton became vacant. This was a rock solid Conservative constituency in Cheshire. Neil had himself selected. His predecessor as the Tory MP was a most distinguished financial journalist. Tatton was a seat that seemed to be impossible to lose. The seat had previously been called Knutsford after another large town within its bounds. It has been in Conservative hands for decades.

In those days a Tory candidate other 30 without a wife would be looked askance at. If a man over the age of 30 had not taken to wife was he a womanizer? Or even worse, was he what they would then have called ‘queer’? 95% of Tory MPs being male back then and same sex marriage was not thought of. Neil was able to assure Tatton Tories that he was affianced to a young lady of the most unimpeachable Conservative credentials. She had been secretary to the most ferociously right wing Member of the Commons: Sir Gerald Nabarro.

Neil was so confident of winning Tatton that five days before polling day he found time to get married to Mary Christine Holman. Like Neil, Christine is always known by her middle name. The couple married in Cornwall. The happy couple was joined in holy matrimony by the Reverend Father David Johnson. Neil had known David when they were up at Cambridge together. David had been President of the Cambridge Union Society. Johnson was an overdressed, acerbic, vertically challenged, foul mouthed, alcoholic of pronounced racist views and homosexual habits. Fr. Johnson had known Neil at Cambridge. The couple chose not to have children.

Neil was enamoured of the Prime Minister. To him Mrs. Thatcher was Gloriana. He never once criticized her.

1983 was a bumper year for the Conservative Party. With Maggie Thatcher as Prime Minister and Britain buoyed up after victory in the Falklands and Labour in hoc to the loony left the outcome was a foregone conclusion. Neil romped home in Tatton. Finally his childhood dream was realized. It must have made for quite a honeymoon!

Neil and Christine bought a house in Tatton to show their commitment to the seat. Neil had to show his face at every bun fight in the constituency: village fetes, Christmas carol services, Remembrance Day wreath laying and suchlike.

No sooner had Neil’s political career begun than he nearly ended it. It was a pattern of unwisdom that we was due to repeat. Neil went on a controversial visit to Berlin in 1983. Thay was just a few months after he was elected to Parliament. Some schoolboy high jinks occurred. That is putting the kindest possible interpretation on it. Some said that japes might be excusable in an adolescent but in a politician they were unforgivable.

Later a TV documentary was broadcast in 1984 entitled Maggie’s Militant Tendency on a programme called Panorama. It focused on Neil’s contentious visit to what was then West Germany. The programme also revealed Neil’s address to the MSI in 1972. It described his time in the Eldon League and the Monday Club. The programme documented his friendship with George Kennedy Young. Kennedy Young was once Director of Britain’s external intelligence agency: MI6. Some viewed him as far right. He was Chair of the Society for Individual Freedom – a strange position for a spy.

It said that there were some Conservative MPs who were Nazis. It was a leftist media plot to smear the party and pretend that the Tories were infiltrated by anti-democratic elements in the same way that Labour was. The programme alleged that Neil Hamilton had given a straight arm salute in Berlin while fooling around in 1983. Neil was on the trip with Gerald Howarth MP and an activist named Philip Pedley. Pedley had once been Chair of the National Young Conservatives. Neil said his reputation had been besmirched by the BBC. Socialist scribblers on Fleet Street took up the story. They were very delighted to traduce Conservative MPs.

Neil later wrote about the programme, ‘’It was an extremely damaging libel and I was extremely concerned about its impact on my career.’’ That is unsurprising. Perhaps this is when his black hair turned grey.

To some Tories, the BBC programme appeared to confirm their worst suspicions about Auntie. Even a moderate Tory like Chris Patten said that BBC stood for the Bolshevik Broadcasting Corporation. Conservatives were convinced that there was a pinko-liberal infestation in the BBC. At the time of Suez, Sir Anthony Eden said that commies at the BBC had tried to mess up his broadcast by shining lights in his eyes as he spoke live on air.

The MPs who were defamed chose to take legal action. Their libel action succeeded and they were paid damages. Neil subsequently stated that he had made a Nazi salute whilst raising his left fingers to his upper lip to represent a Hitler moustache when he was in Germany merely to ridicule National Socialism. He was cognizant that this constituted an offence under the laws of the Federal Republic of Germany. The imputation that his gesture was expressive of Nazism was preposterous. Neil is certainly no fan of Hitler. Hitler was an anti-smoker and Neil is an indefatigable advocate of smokers’ rights. Tarnishing his reputation as a Nazi was egregiously low and dishonest even by the standards of the BBC.

The libel action was bankrolled by Sir James Goldsmith. Goldsmith was the father of Lord Zac the Conservative politician. In the 1980s Sir James was a stalwart Conservative. He was a self-made billionaire though he had not been born poor:  Sir James was an Old Etonian and his father was a well to do Franco-British hotelier. He recognized in Neil a man of prodigious talent and the uttermost probity. That was why he happily contributed to the fund to clear Neil’s name.

The Spectator columnist Taki also funded Neil’s libel action. Taki Theodorcopalous is an American-educated Greek shipping millionaire of pronounced right wing proclivities. Taki had some fellow feeling of those in legal trouble. In the 1980s he served a few months in prison for accidentally bringing a small quantity of cocaine with him into Heathrow Airport. That could happen to anyone!

David Davis was then a director of the sugar company Tate and Lyle. Incidentally that was where Davis got to know an ex- Scots Guards officer named Iain Duncan Smith who later became an ill-starred leader of the Conservative Party and then a cabinet minister. Davis was a rival of Neil’s in Conservative politics from the 1970s. Nonetheless, Davis and Neil had a good rapport. Davis managed to convince his company to donate to the claimant’s fund. Thus Tate and Lyle became another funder of Neil’s defamation action.

Lord Harris of High Cross also donated around GBP 100 000 to fund Neil’s libel action.

Neil said in his libel case that he was like a Mike Yarwood figure in FCS. Yarwood was then very well known for his impersonations. Neil has a gift for mimicry and often took off politicians and well-known actors. He was known for his impersonations of Enoch Powell, General de Gaulle, Edward Heath, Harold Wilson and the actor Frankie Howerd.  Neil cheerily recalled that he had appeared in blackface in 1982 to ridicule the Ugandan tyrant Idi Amin. He had even dressed up in clericals while doing an impersonation of Canon James own while sailing down the Cam in Cambridge. Neil said he had plenty of respectable character witnesses but chief among them would be Norman St John Stevas. St John Stevas was then a Tory MP and he was the only ever person to be President of both the Cambridge Union and the Oxford Union. St John Stevas was gay but whilst an MP he did not feel able to come out. Had he done so it would probably have been terminal for his career.

The Sunday Times offered Neil a chance to give his side of the story. He said that when he gave the sieg heil salute he was simply engaging in a bit of tomfoolery. He noted that Julian Lewis was there and Lewis is Jewish and indeed several of his relatives were killed in the Holocaust. Lewis recognized what Neil was doing was harmless buffoonery.

The liberal action against the BBC went to trial. Neil was due to be cross-examined by the BBC’s counsel. However, on 21 October 1986 the Director-General of the BBC, Alasdair Milne, decided that the BBC would give in. Milne explained that the Governors of the BBC had ordered him to do so. The BBC paid the legal costs of the claimants which amounted to hundreds of thousands of Pounds. The BBC also paid Neil Hamilton and Gerald Howarth GBP 20 000 apiece. Howarth was the MP for Aldershot at the time. That sum was more than an MP’s annual salary at the time. On 27 October 1985 the BBC broadcast another edition of Panorama in which the show apologized unstintingly for the false statements it had made traducing the two men.

Some said that the BBC had had its arm twisted by politicians and that witnesses had been threatened. The BBC Board of Governors had wanted the case settled and told the BBC Board of Management to do just that. Many in the BBC doubted the wisdom of caving in. The BBC’s barristers had not had an opportunity to even begin their defence in court when the BBC surrendered.

The National Young Conservatives (NYC) suggested that there had been some behind the scenes pressure. The Chairman of NYC Richard Fuller said it was very odd that the BBC had capitulated as the trial was proceeding pleasingly for them.

Malcolm McAlpine had access to the BBC Governors. Some speculated that he had a hand in the BBC’s curious decision. Malcolm McAlpine was a cousin of Lord Alistair McAlpine. Lord McAlpine was a multimillionaire and treasurer of the Conservative Party. He was a doyen of the right and the Eurosceptic wing of the party. He was therefore a fan of Neil. Indeed in 1992 right wing Tories gathered at Lord McAlpine’s house to celebrate the fact that a Tory wet and Europhile Chris Patten had lost his seat at Bath. The Liberal Democrats had covered Bath with posters saying ‘Let’s flatten Patten’ and they did. The price of failure for Patten was not too bad. He was made Governor-General of Hong Kong and was later elected Chancellor of Oxford University.

Regarding the BBC affair, there were claims that witnesses had been intimidated. There is no suggestion that Neil was involved in this either directly or indirectly. A BBC memorandum said that 17 witnesses had been made to change their testimony. Some of those who were due to testify were Conservatives and were revolted by what they saw at Berlin. Nevertheless, they suddenly claimed not to have seen anything untoward.

Gerald Howarth and Neil Hamilton thought that the case against Philip Pedley would be pursued. Pedley would not accept the BBC’s offer of accord and satisfaction. Pedley also had some wealthy backers to fund his claim. Richard Fuller vowed to come to his aid.

Jeffrey Archer was then the Deputy Chairman of the Tory Party. The millionaire novelist considered it unwise for Pedley to fight on. The Tory Party had settled the matter. It was risky to continue to battle in the courts. If Pedley lost then it would look very bad for the party. Pedley could not afford the libel action on his own. Without Fuller’s financial support he would be obliged to settle the case. Archer told Fuller it was foolhardy to fund Pedley’s case. But Fuller resisted pressure to withdraw his financial support from his friend.

The Labour Party said that Conservative Central Office (CCO) had orchestrated a cover up and used undue influence to sway the BBC. Labour wanted to question the Chairman of the Conservative and Unionist Party about the affair: Norman Tebbit.

A Labour politician named Dale Campbell-Savours said he had evidence in a letter from Pedley to John Selwyn Gummer MP. Gummer was a former Party Chairman and was later a cabinet minister under Major. The letter supposedly showed that Tory Central Office had contacted witnesses to persuade them to alter their testimony to the advantage of the claimant.

Norman Tebbit acknowledged that one witness had contacted Tory Central Office but said this was merely because he wanted advice but that CCO had declined to give any as that might seem unethical. Tebbit said that the socialist Campbell-Savours was misusing parliamentary privilege to make false allegations knowingly which otherwise would have been defamatory. Tebbit walked out of the House of Commons chamber without making a further comment.

On 25 October the newspaper reported more evidence of unethical communications with witnesses. Neil then withdrew his action against Pedley. Pedley said that he would not back down. There were still people calling for a full enquiry.

Norman Tebbit made statements about the case but not in the House of Commons chamber. To mislead the House is a resigning matter. Neil said that Tebbit was refusing to address the House on the issue because Tebbit’s statements were misleading. Neil urged the Party Chairman to speak about the matter on the floor of the House. Not everyone in the party was sympathetic to Neil. Some said he had brought it into disrepute.

The Hogan Memorandum was an internal BBC memo which named witnesses who had altered their stories. The Independent newspaper said that there was a recording of a statement by a Conservative witness to the incident. The witness was worried by CCO’s insistence that the Berlin incident had not occurred. CCO was keen that no one substantiate the allegations against Tory MPs.

Mr. Campbell Savours claimed that the Hogan Memorandum proved that the BBC had been threatened. He sent it to Sir Michael Havers who was the Attorney-General and of course a Tory. Havers is the father of the actor Nigel Havers.

The Labour parliamentarian Campbell-Savours said that CCO had striven to meddle with witnesses. It was alleged that CCO had tried to tone down statements made by David Mitchell. Campbell Savours then sent a transcript to the Attorney-General.

Neil had made several statements in the media about his contested visit to Berlin. Some Conservative Party members were supposedly told by CCO to claim that they had not seen Neil goose stepping. Some of the witnesses had initially made such an accusation but had changed their testimony. The theory goes that there was a whip at their back to do so. They were told that it would be deeply unhelpful to the party if they did not retract their earlier statements and if there were no retraction then their careers in the party would come to a juddering halt.  Neil wrote to the Chairman of the Conservative Party in January 1984 stating that he had not goose stepped or performed Nazi salutes ever anywhere.

Gerald Howarth and Neil Hamilton had brought a libel action against Philip Pedley. They then discontinued the action on the basis that it was exorbitantly expensive, horrifically time consuming and stressful and that this was out of all proportion to the apology that they could possibly obtain from Pedley. On 3 December 1986 Pedley said he would not accept the terms of settlement offered by the claimants. He wanted to case to go to trial.

The judge was Mr. Justice Simon Brown. He ruled that Howarth and Neil were not allowed to claim that Pedley’s statements were libelous and they were ordered to pay his costs.

Mr. Pedley was jubilant. He acted as though it were a vindication and said he retracted not one iota of what he had said. He reiterated his claim that he had never suggested that Howarth and Neil Hamilton were National Socialists but rather that their antics gravely undermined the Conservative Party. As a staunch Conservative he was aghast to see two Tory MPs bringing the party into disrepute with their immature looning. The Young Conservative report dismissed Neil’s behaviour as no more than ‘’eccentricity.’’ Pedley reaffirmed his earlier accusations against the men.

Pedley said that members of the YC Committee had been subjected to poison pen letters and verbal abuse after their names were published in Bulldog which was the newspaper of the Young National Front (a white supremacist party). Pedley claimed that he and others had suffered harassment from private security companies. He was implying that wealthy people had paid for this.

Soon after being elected to Parliament, Neil was made an officer of the backbench committee on trade and industry. The Chairman was a formidable Tory MP named Michael Grylls.

In 1984 there were dozens of coalmines all across the realm. But many of them had exhausted their supply of economically viable coal. Some of them were digging up mud. The UK was importing cheaper coal from Czechoslovakia (a country that is now two). North Sea oil was providing much of the United Kingdom’s energy needs as was imported oil and nuclear energy. The government decided to close down uneconomic coal pits and let the others prosper. Leftists believe that coal mines without any coal should remain open. All miners were public sector employees and therefore paid by the taxpayer. Left wingers argued that the poorest people should pay relatively well-paid miners to dig up mud. Every penny wasted on this was a penny robbed from the NHS and other urgent matters.

In 1984 the Miners’ Strike began. The National Union of Mineworkers’ (NUM) leader was Arthur Scargill. Scargill had been a member of the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) when Stalin was the communist supremo of the world. Scargill was a denier of and a defender of countless communist atrocities all across the globe. He wanted to visit this reign of terror on the United Kingdom. Scargill was one of many unrepentant communists who joined the Labour Party in their bid to abolish democracy and replace it with a totalitarian state. Scargill’s dream was to open concentration camps for political dissidents in the UK but it never came true. Scargill declared a national strike without even holding a ballot of NUM.

There were 180 000 miners in the UK at the time of the Miners’ Strike. Not all miners were members of the NUM. Even then not all NUM miners went on strike because there had been no national ballot. NUM wanted to hold people to ransom.

Mrs. Thatcher had seen this strike coming. The NUM had brought down Heath’s Conservative Government in 1974. Ten years on Thatcher was adamant that she would not allow the NUM to subvert the will of the people again.

The NUM resorted to intimidation. They committed violent crime against the police. They even murdered one man for going to work. The NUM was open about its real aim. It was not about saving jobs. It was about overthrowing the elected government as Scargill said time and time again. Though Scargill was never an MP he was a far more puissant figure on the left than even the leader of the Labour Party.

Coal is also the most polluting fuel. That did not stop leftists who pretend to care about the environment advocating for coal.

Neil was four square behind the government on this one. He believed that Britain must not bend the knee to the bully boy tactics of the NUM.

Labour did not throw its weight behind the strike because there was no national ballot. The far left fulminated that Neil Kinnock was a Judas for not giving unstinting support to their attempt to bring down democracy. Some extremists such as Tony Benn and Jeremy Corbyn endorsed the NUM’s anti-democratic campaign.

In the end the cause of freedom prevailed. Scargill led his acolytes to an ignominious defeat. There are now only 2 000 coal miners left.

In April 1986 Neil was one of 10 MPs (all of them Conservatives) to vote against Her Majesty’s Government on a bill which meant deeper European integration.

In the 1980s Neil came to know the late George Choudhury-Best who was a Conservative activist in London. Choudhury-Best was an Anglo-India who had shifted from the subcontinent to what he termed the ‘mother country’ some years after India suffered independence. Choudhury-Best disenjoyed Indian independence intensely. He was keenly alive to the manifold benisons that British superintendence had conferred upon the Subcontinent. Choudhury-Best recognized India as Britain’s nursling and was aghast at premature independence and all its concomitant horrors. He was appalled that the rampantly corrupt Congress Party was ruining the country with socialist policies that impeded its economy while becoming a Soviet ally. Communist governments had taken over West Bengal and Kerala. Independence had led to Partition and the murder of over a million people. None of these cataclysms would have befallen India if India had remained beneath Britannia’s benevolent shield for a few more decades.

Neil was not scared of making contentious remarks. In 1987 Frank Dobson the Labour MP and future Health Secretary made a speech about amputees. Neil quipped, ‘’he does not have a leg to stand on.’’ The left wing extremist and IRA supporter Jeremy Corbyn made a speech about the need to increase the state pension. Neil shot back, ‘’some of his IRA friends could be used to get rid of pensioners by shooting them.’’ In fairness, the IRA did kill a lot of pensioners.

Corbyn is the most extreme leftist ever elected to Westminster. He has been on the side of every enemy Britain has had since 1945. Corbyn is a publicist for most of the tyrannies around the world. Comrade Corbyn is an outspoken advocate of oppression and cruelty. He is a champagne socialist. His desire to help those in pauperism does not mean he donates a penny of his own. He is exceedingly generous but only with other people’s money instead. He still owns his house like the selfish capitalist he is.

In the 1980s Enoch Powell was still in Parliament. He was no longer a Tory but sat as an Ulster Unionist representing Down South – as in the southern part of County Down. Neil was an impassioned admirer of Powell. Neil says that he is not a racialist but that Powell was correct inasmuch as unchecked immigration has led to many fraught incidents.

For the left, Powell was a pantomime villain. Socialists students displayed placards bearing the legend ‘’disembowel Enoch Powell’’ when he came to address universities. Compassionate aren’t they these leftists? But Powell’s friends say he was not gargoyle.

Neil was an ardent Thatcherite. Despite his unswerving loyalty he was not rewarded with preferment.

Neil joined the No Turning Back Group. This was a ginger group of Thatcherites. It was founded by Michael Brown MP who turned out to be gay. Brown was in the closet in the 1980s. Other prominent MPs were members of the No Turning Back Group such as Alan Duncan, Peter Lilley, Gerald Howarth and Michael Portillo.

Conservative policy in the 1980s was to phase out leaded petrol. It degraded the environment and had a deleterious effect on the brain. It was linked to a heightened risk of criminality. Neil was dead against ending leaded petrol. He said that it had not been demonstrated that leaded petrol was in any way harmful to people or to the environment. That was an astonishing claim in view of scientific peer reviewed articles proving what leaded petrol does. He noted that it would hurt the economy if leaded petrol was forbidden. It was trademark Neil – swimming against the tide. He is an anti-environmentalist.

In 1985 Neil started to work for Ian Greer Associations. One of the main corporate clients was US Tobacco. Neil was ever the staunch libertarian. Michael Brown worked on this project with him.

As a politician Neil was always his own man. He was resolutely libertarian. In the 1980s a type of tobacco called Skoal Bandits was legally available in the UK. Some demanded it be prohibited because it was said to be very carcinogenic.

Edwina Currie and David Mellor were junior health ministers at the time. They were inclined to prohibit Skoal Bandits.

The House of Commons Select Committee on Standards produced a report concluding that Brown and Neil Hamilton had lobbied minister with a view to persuading them to allow Skoal Bandits. It noted that neither man declared an interest – that he had a financial interest in allowing Skoal Bandits. Neil admitted that he had not declared an interest.

Neil was almost alone in arguing that Skoal Bandits should remain legal because people have the right to take risks if they please. Furthermore, as we have seen with drugs – prohibition never works. Nevertheless, Skoal Bandits were outlawed.

While in the House of Commons, Neil proved himself to be a fearless advocate for liberty.  He was unwavering in defence of the right to smoke and indeed to do as one so pleases with one’s own body. He was the only MP out of 650 to vote against the government’s legislation banning the sale of human organs.

In 1986 Neil was made Parliamentary Private Secretary (PPS) to David Mitchell MP. This was a stepping stone to being a minister.

In November 1989 Neil won the Spectator magazine’s prize for being parliamentary wit of the year. With trademark drollery and self-effacement Neil joked that he believed it for being ‘’parliamentary twit of the year.’ Self-deprecation is one of Neil’s many endearing traits.

While in the House of Commons, Neil spoke up for the Western Goals Institute. Andrew V R Smith was then the head of the Western Goals Institute (WGI). Smith, like Neil, had been in the Monday Club. Reverend Martin Smith (an Ulster Unionist) was also a member. So were several Conservative parliamentarians: Sir Patrick Wall, Nicholas Winterton and Bill Walker. Neil was on the parliamentary advisory board of the WGI.

WGI was committed to the maintenance and furtherance of Western influence in all parts of the globe. Some its members were unabashed about advocating coups d’etats in other countries. It had fraternal links with Latin American juntas that did not win many prizes for human rights. WGI’s ‘muscular’ foreign policy had some saying that mercenaries ought to be hired to effectuate regime change in a manner congenial to British neo-imperialism.

WGI displayed questionable taste when in 1992 it invited Jean-Marie Le Pen to address them. Le Pen was then the leader of le Fronte National which his daughter Marine now heads. Le Pen was almost universally seen as a racist. Jean-Marie Le Pen was a perennial presidential candidate and in 2002 even came runner-up.

WGI also wanted Alessandra Mussolini to speak to them. Miss Mussolini is the granddaughter of Benito Mussolini. She also speaks up for her grandfather’s reputation. She was then a deputy in the Italian Parliament and a member of the European Parliament. She had also made a name for herself posing for ‘hard’ nude photos. La Mussolini spent much of her time in Brussels and Strasbourg singing hymns of praise to Il Duce. Both Le Pen and Mussolini were to speak to fringe meetings of the Tory Conference!  Alessandra Mussolini is a medical doctor but CCO suspected that her oration would not be solely restricted to health policy. An unapologetic apologist for fascism was not exactly the sort of person the Conservative Party considered to be an ideal conference speaker.

Sir Norman Fowler was then Chairman of the Conservative Party. He was incensed at the invitations – he considered fascism to be foul and was deeply worried at how it would ruin the party’s reputation. Fowler emphasized that the Conservative Party was not linked to the WGI. Both Le Pen and Mussolini were banned from entering the country so the meetings did not occur.

In the 1980s South Africa still had the apartheid (apartness) system. This segregated people of different races. The white minority comprised no more than 16% of the population of the Republic of South Africa. Whites virtually monopolized political power. They also owned 87% of the land. By law a white could not sell this land to a non-white person. The Bantustans reserved for black people were largely infertile and devoid of mineral resources. Such structured racial inequality appalled most of the world. Black people were not permitted to be citizens of South Africa. The South African Government used heavy violence to maintain control. The torture of those suspected of trying to overthrow the government was not uncommon. In the 1960s and 1970s there had been two fairly large scale massacres of unarmed black people by the South African Police.

South Africa refused to play sports against non-white players. Therefore South Africa was subject to a sporting boycott. The Springboks did not get to play foreign teams from 1970 till the early 1990s.

Most countries refused to trade with South Africa. The United Kingdom persisted in doing business with South Africa. Neil was one of those Conservatives who was adamantly opposed to sanctions against South Africa. He said he deplored apartheid but this was an internal matter. The United Kingdom happily did business with many far more tyrannical regimes and somehow that was not propping up oppression. In Zimbabwe, the Mugabe regime murdered several thousand people because they belonged to the Ndebele tribe. But the world turned Nelson’s eye to that one because the perpetrator was black. No one called for sanctions on Zimbabwe despite its regime slaughtering far more people than South Africa did. John Major even had the Queen give Mugabe an honorary knighthood!

In 1990 Nelson Mandela was released from prison in South Africa. It looked like apartheid might be abolished. Some people launched a desperate last ditch effort to preserve the racist system. Mandela later went on to be President of South Africa.

The anti-apartheid movement’s mantra was ‘’disinvest’’. Neil was dead against sanctions in South Africa. His argument was that apartheid was a domestic matter with which the United Kingdom must not interfere. Funnily enough governments that demanded sanctions on South Africa were usually the loudest in denouncing ‘’interference’’ and ‘’neo-colonialism’’ when anyone criticized their often appalling human rights records. Neil said that a moral principle had to be non-selective if it was to be moral at all. It was nonsense to impose sanctions against South Africa if the UK did not do so to black nationalist regimes north of the Limpopo which were often far more hideous than the apartheid government.

Margaret Thatcher had been against sanctions on South Africa on the ground that this would simply further impoverish black people who were already suffering pauperism. Moreover, there was no guarantee that sanctions would lead to political reform. A far smaller country, Cuba, had toughed out sanctions for far longer and its oppressive regime remained intact.

One of the reasons that Neil cited for being opposed to sanctions on South Africa was that this would increase unemployment in the UK. The MPs who demanded that the UK ban all trade with South Africa were usually the same ones who harped on the most about how evil unemployment was. But there they were demanding that their constituents be rendered jobless.

Neil also noted that South Africa was a reliable Cold War ally and the war could turn hot at any moment. The Treaty of Vereeniging which ended the Second South African War in 1902 stated that native affairs (i.e. the rights of black people) was the exclusive competence of the South African Government and the UK was not to interfere in this policy area.

Neil may have been a model for the late Rik Mayall’s character Alan B’stard. B’stard is a conniving self-serving Tory MP of fervently pro-apartheid views, raging vanity who has a sexually insatiable blonde wife. I wonder who that could be? Alan B’stard also drinks champagne and will only drink it if it is South African. This in an era of the anti-apartheid boycott of South African goods. Some say that B’stard was based on a composite of Tory MPs.

Neil worked for Strategy Network International (SNI). This company was founded with the aim of lobbying against sanctions on South Africa and Namibia which was the under South African control. In SNI Neil met Derek Laud. SNI wanted the United Kingdom to break UN Resolution 435 calling for genuine independence for Namibia. Laud and Neil had a mutual friend – Michael Brown MP. Neil was paid GBP 8 000 per annum for his consultancy. That was a very considerable sum considering that the fees for Eton were GBP 10 000 at the time.

SNI managed to have Neil very well treated. He was flown business class to South Africa and put up in five star hotels.

Lady Margaret Thatcher visited the Hamilton’s not so humble abode on at least one occasion.

In July 1990 the Prime Minister appointed Neil as a whip. It was a time of intense controversy over the Community Charge which was commonly called the poll tax. Neil had been fervent in his support for the unpopular measure. This earned him Mrs. T’s gratitude.

In 1990 Thatcher introduced the Community Charge across England and Wales. It was dubbed the Poll Tax. It had been brought into Scotland the year before when the rates were up for review. The Government was horrified that Labour councils had been wasting public money on PC propaganda and nuclear free zones. Mrs. T believed that hardworking people should not have their money squandered on loony left nonsense.

The Community Charge was widely reviled. It was a flat tax payable to one’s local authority. Pensioners and those on benefits paid a lower amount and students were exempt. For the wealthy, the Community Charge was a tax cut. Neil was a firm advocate of the Community Charge. But it was so exceptionally unpopular that Conservative support in the opinion polls dropped to levels not seen again till the dark days of Liz Truss. In Scotland people complained bitterly that the tax was tried out on them before South Britain. This was held to be confirmatory of Scotland’s second class status.

It was easy to evade the Community Charge by taking oneself off the electoral register. Poorer people (mostly Labour voters) were inclined to do so. In which case the Tories would win forever. But Labour ought to like the tax – it had the word community in the name.

Some Conservatives began to think that the Iron Lady was a liability and not an asset. Tory Wets had long wanted to be shot of her. Mrs. T. was adamantine that there would be no compromise on the Community Charge. Full steam ahead with it! The brains behind it was the Honourable William (now Lord) Waldegrave. He was spoken about as PM material. But he lost his seat in 1997 and ended up being sent back to school – to Eton as Provost (i.e. live in head of the board of governors).

In November 1990 Michael Heseltine challenged Thatcher for the leadership of the party and thus the prime ministership. The Chief Whip told Neil that as a whip it behoved him to maintain the strictest neutrality. Neil disregarded this instruction. Whatever he learnt about Heseltine’s campaign he passed on to the Thatcher camp. Neil said to the Prime Minister that she ought to interview each of the Cabinet individually. He thought that they would lack the courage to tell her that they wanted her to resign. However, Neil was wrong and several of them told Thatcher to stand down.

Despite several Cabinet ministers urging Thatcher to step down as PM, Neil pleaded with her to stay on. In a meeting of backbench Tories, Peter Lilley said that Thatcher had had her day. Neil interrupted Lilley and expressed his disdain for Lilley as a faint heart.

On 21 November 1990 Neil and other Thatcherite fanatics met the PM for one last time at Number 10 Downing Street. Thatcher resigned the next day. In the subsequent Tory leadership election there were three candidates.

Michael Heseltine was a Europhile Tory wet who had resigned from the Cabinet in 1986 over the Westland Helicopter Affair. Heseltine pretended it was a principle resignation. In fact the miscalculated thinking the Tories would lose the 1987 election and be could become party leader. This man of raging vanity and vaulting ambition never made it to the top of the greasy pole. He came close though: being Deputy Prime Minister from 1995 to 1997. Heseltine was the son of a Welsh factory owner. He had been to Shrewbsury, Oxford and the Welsh Guards. He was scorned for wearing his Guards tie for more days than he was in the Guards: sixty.

Then there as Douglas Hurd who was also a One Nation Tory and a Europhile but had been loyal to Thatcher. Hurd had been Captain of School at Eton before going up to King’s College, Cambridge and working in the Foreign Office. Hurd played down his poshness saying his pater had only been a tenant farmer. But as the son and grandson of Tory MPs he was a bit too much of a toff.

Lastly there was John Major. Major was seen as a Eurosceptic and a Thatcherite. He also came from a working class background unlike the others. That was perceived to be electorally advantageous. The other candidates were too posh.

Neil cast his ballot for Major. He believed that Major would continue Thatcher’s legacy. Neil was to be bitterly disillusioned.

In 1990 after Thatcher fell it was a pity for Neil was perfervid in support of his Monetarist policies. However, it also presented an opportunity. She had steadfastly refused to promote him from the backbenches.

John Major became Prime Minister. Soon Neil gained promotion. He was made an under parliamentary secretary for corporate affairs in 1992. He then became Minister for Deregulation and Corporate Affairs. This was a brief he relished because was a true believer in the mission. This was a junior ministership. Under each Cabinet minister there are three or four junior ministers. A Cabinet Minister usually has the title Secretary of State. Junior ministers are styled ‘Minister of State’. The next step for Neil would be promotion into the cabinet.

The hot topic was the Treaty of Maastricht. This treaty signed in the Netherlands was to turn the European Economic Community into the European Union. Neil was deeply skeptical about it. He believed that European integration had gone as far as it should. Like Thatcher he believed that the EEC was imposing too much regulation and degrading national sovereignty. He feared that if the EEC became the EU this would aggravate these tendencies. Denmark held a referendum on Maastricht. The Danes voted No in June 1992. Then Denmark held a second referendum and the result was affirmative.

Although Neil had deep misgivings about Maastricht he remained faithful to the Major Administration. Some other Conservative ministers resigned in opposition to Maastricht. Neil beseeched them not to do so.

Neil was sent to meetings of the Council of Ministers of the European Union. He became deeply disillusioned with the European Union (EU). He came to think it was unreformable and hell-bent to removing all national sovereignty.

In the 1990s Neil became involved with a parliamentary lobbyist named Ian Greer. Greer brought a new more pro-active style to lobbying. Mr. Greer was homosexual and Neil was not prejudiced against Greer because of his orientation. This was an era in which homosexuality was still deeply disapproved of by many Tories. No Tory MP came out as gay until Alan Duncan did in 2001. Duncan, the MP for Rutland and Melton, incidentally was another friend of Neil’s.

Harvey Proctor was also a friend of Neil’s. Proctor was a Conservative MP who got into trouble when he had an encounter with a rentboy whom he believed was 21 but turned out to be 17. It was an innocent mistake and could happen to anyone.

On his solicitor’s advice Proctor pleaded guilty to an offence in relation to this. He got a suspended sentence. There is no suggestion that Neil was involved in Mr. Proctor’s encounter with the ill-judged rentboy encounter or was even aware of it. Proctor subsequently left politics and ran a gentlemen’s outfitters. He had always been a shirt lifter!

In 1992 Neil happened to be in Harvey Proctor’s shirt shop when two men assaulted Proctor for homophobic reasons. Neil valiantly came to the defence of his friend. He suffered a broken nose for his pains. The two assailants were later jailed for their attack.

It was in the 1990s that Neil came to know Derek Laud. Laud was a Conservative activist. Unusually for a Tory at the time he was black and born in the United Kingdom to Jamaican immigrant parents and flamboyantly gay. Derek Laud grew up in a family with little money. He joined the Monday Club which was often accused of being anti-black. Laud is also gay. He was selected as a Conservative prospective parliamentary candidate for the 1997 election. However, he withdrew when allegations of unethical conduct were made against him. This did not stop him being made Joint Master of the new Forest Foxhounds . He was later a Big Brother star. But he was so loathed by his competitor who called himself ‘Science’ – who was also black – that Science said ‘’Laud is the first black person ever who actually makes me want to join the BNP.’’

Laud had written speeches for Thatcher and also for Alan Clark MP. That was despite Clark having said of the Ugandan Asians in 1973, ‘’they must be told ‘you cannot come here because you are not white.’ ’’ Laud was a friend of David Cameron’s. Years later he became so horrified with the ineptitude of Theresa May that he joined the Lib Dems and even stood for them in Cameron’s old seat of Witney, Oxfordshire.

Neil knew an Egyptian tycoon named Mohammed Fayed. Mr. Fayed was best known for owning Britain’s flagship department store: Harrod’s. Fayed was a fraud who could not even tell the truth about his name. The man from Alexandria styled himself Al Fayed – misusing the nobiliary particule. He also gave several contradictory answers about his year of birth. It was proven that he ordered a break-in to a safety deposit box owned by a business rival named Tiny Roland. Fayed had been a Conservative donor. However, he became embittered when his application for British citizenship was refused.

Fayed had grown up in Alexandria as the son of a schoolteacher. They family was higher status than you might expect because most Egyptians were illiterate at the time. Fayed was a very small businessman until the early 1950s. By some miracle he managed to marry a Miss Khasshoggi. She was from a very affluent and well-connected Saudi Arabian family. Admittedly this is because the Saudis became as rich as Crassus. His well got wife opened many doors for him. Before you can say ‘’bribery’’ he had fat contracts in Saudi Arabia. He later served as the honorary consul for one of the most dishonourable dictators in the world – Papa Doc Duvalier of Haiti.

Mr. Fayed craved the one thing he never deserved: respectability. He laboured under the misapprehension that gentlemanliness could be bought. But common decency is not a commodity for sale.It was as though Fayed sought to exemplify Oscar Wilde’s dictum – he knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.

Mohammed Fayed was an oleaginous social climber. There was more than a touch of Melmotte from The Way we live now by Anthony Trollope. He purchased the former home of the Duke and Duchess of Windsor in Paris. This, Fayed reasoned, brought him closer to the royal family. Then Fayed became the major financial donor to the Royal Windsor Horse Show. This again was a bid to buy some kudos. His donation obliged Her Gracious Majesty to deign to meet him.

Mr. Fayed was of the Mohammedan persuasion. He never pretended to be a pious Muslim. If hirsuteness is indicative of Islamic observance it is notable that Fayed was always clean-shaven. He was partial to spirituous liquor but not to orisons nor did he profess to be a Koranic scholar. There was little anti-Muslim prejudice in the United Kingdom before 9/11. The average Briton knew precious little about Muslims or Islam. Fayed did not try that old chestnut – that he was a victim of anti-Muslim animus. Nor did he say he was hard done by on account of his nationality or ethnicity.

On October 1994 the Guardian newspaper ran a story saying that Tim Smith MP and Neil Hamilton MP had been paid cash by Mr. Fayed for asking questions in Parliament.

Fayed alleged that he had paid Neil and another MP in cash to ask questions in the House of Commons. The shopkeeper said that sometimes cash was handed to the MPs in envelopes and on other occasions money was paid to Ian Greer and was then passed on to the MPs in question. Another Tory MP such as Tim Smith admitted that this was true and on 19 October 1994 he stood down from his ministerial post. Mr. Smith also stated that he would leave Parliament at the next general election. Tim Smith was an Old Harrovian who sat for Beaconsfield in Buckinghamshire. Notably, Smith was the one who defeated Tony Blair in Blair’s first attempt to enter Parliament: the 1982 by election.

Neil vehemently denied ever taking cash to ask questions. The then Deputy Prime Minister Michael Heseltine questioned Neil about the issue. Neil categorically denied ever having any financial relationship with Fayed. Mohammed Fayed boasted ‘’you hire an MP like you hire a taxi.’’ He was so rancorous about being refused British citizenship by a Tory Government that he decided to embarrass the Conservative Party as much as he possibly could. He became a passionate Labour supporter despite not being able to vote. It was solely out of spite – he wanted to give the Tories one in the eye. If Fayed wanted to exact vengeance he certainly succeeded.

Neil initiated libel proceedings against those who had accused him of taking cash for questions. John Major said to Neil that the whirlwind of negative publicity around this was harming the government. He told Neil to resign or he would be dismissed.  On 26 October 1994 Neil was prevailed upon to resign from his government post. Relentless negative publicity about him was damaging the government. The attacks on Neil’s honour continued unabated.

The libel action was against the Guardian newspaper. Ian Greer was Neil’s co-plaintiff in the case. In 1996 the Defamation Act amended the Bill of Rights 1989. This permitted utterances made in Parliament to be questioned in court.

The day before the case was due to be heard the two co-plaintiffs settled saying that they could not afford to pursue the action and there was a conflict of interests. The Guardian then triumphantly published a headline about Neil dubbing him ‘’a liar and a cheat.’’ They were sure that Neil would never sue. Alan Rusbridger was then the editor of the newspaper. He crowed about how the two has capitulated.

On 1 October 1996 – the day that the libel trial would have commenced – Alan Rusbridger and Neil went head to head on Newsnight – a nightly current affairs show on the BBC.

Many scurrilous stories about Neil appeared in the Guardian. The Guardian is of course the sewer of choice for leftist ordure.

To some it appeared that Neil had been a victim of the left wing gutter press. Tories were accustomed to being monstered by scurrilous and scabrous dishonest pinko-liberal hacks.

Sir Gordon Downey was the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards. He began an investigation into the allegations against Neil. The investigation came to a conclusion in 1997. Neil said that were the report to be critical of him then he would stand down from Parliament.

Edwina Currie gave evidence to the enquiry. Miss Currie was a fellow Tory but had been a nemesis of Neil’s for many years. She said that when she showed Neil photos of the cancers caused by tobacco this did not sway him at all. Neil said he judged the issue on the merits and not on emotive images. He was perfectly aware that smoking can kill but that people ought to be permitted to make their own decisions regarding health and lifestyle. Neil and Michael Brown MP had been paid GBP 6 000 each and been provided with free hotel stays and lavish dinners by Skoal Bandits in return for seeking to keep their product lawful. In 1989 Kenneth Clarke, the Secretary of State for Health, signed an order banning Skoal Bandits. This was despite Clarke being a lifelong smoker and indeed working as a consultant for British American Tobacco.

Currie’s concern for health was odd. She said that cervical cancer was caused by crisps and northerners. She opined that good Christian people do not catch AIDS. She later resigned in a dispute over salmonella. It was a storm in an egg cup.

What no one knew at the time was that the married Edwina Currie was then having an affair with the also married John Major. They are both so repulsive I do not know which one of them should be more ashamed. In the early 1990s Major was to launch his ill-starred back to basics campaign. His crusade for personal morality came to grief when it was revealed that several Tory MPs had a predeliction for adultery. Had Mrs. Currie revealed than that she was penetrated by Major in the 1980s then it could easily have brought him down as Prime Minister.

Throughout this time Neil was being savaged in the newspapers every single day. Lunchtime O’Booze and Glenda Slagg type columnists always had him in their sights. This unrelenting media campaign depicted Neil as Mr. Sleaze.

Sir Gordon Downey’s report reached damning conclusions about Neil. Downey said that the evidence against Neil in the cash for questions affair was convincing.  It found that Neil had misled Michael Heseltine who was then the President of the Board of Trade and later the Deputy Prime Minister. Neil said that he did not have any financial ties to Ian Greer. Whereas in fact Neil had been paid by Greer on two occasions in 1988 and 1989 and these two sums had added up to GBP 10 000. In fairness this had been five years before Heseltine posed the question to him. In Neil’s mind this was ancient history and it was true in 1994 that he had no financial relationship with Greer at that time.

Neil and his goodwife had stayed in the Ritz Hotel in Paris and in Mr. Fayed’s Scottish castle gratis. Neil had not declared these in the register of members’ interests. Downey found that this was ethically below par and in breach of the Nolan Standards in Public Life.

Michael Brown was in a spot of bother. He had long before acknowledged being paid GBP 8 000 by US Tobacco and not cited it in the Register of Members Interests as he was legally obliged to do. But in the 1990s it emerged that the 40 something MP had been on a Caribbean holiday with a 20 year old man and shared a double bed with him. The gay age of consent was 21 at the time. What Brown was doing was technically illegal. He was not prosecuted. John Major said that homosexuality was no longer a resigning matter. Brown was not ‘out’ at the time. But when the news broke he publicly stated that he was gay.

Michael Brown also lost his seat in the 1997 election. Downey said that if Neil and Tim Smith had still been in Parliament after the election then they should have both been suspended for a long period of time.

Neil fiercely defended himself. He said the report was shoddy and based on hearsay. He accused it of bias. It was not a judicial inquiry, did not have a presumption of innocence and did not require the criminal standard of proof.

Tim Smith said he agreed with the conclusions of the report and sought no further role in public life.

Fayed was a deeply unsavoury character. His wastrel son Dodi Fayed was a fully qualified professional playboy. Dodi was engaged to an American model in 1997 when he began a liaison with the recently divorced Princess Diana. When the Ishmaelite businessman heard that his son had begun an intimate relationship with the princess he was jubilant. This was the establishment validation that he had yearned for with such flagrant indignity. Dodi dropped his fiancée like a hot potato and sent her a few million Pounds to encourage her to go away and shut up.

Dodi’s relationship with Diana lasted all of three weeks. They were together for about 10 of these 21 days. Nonetheless Fayed claimed without any evidence at all that the two were engaged and that Diana was pregnant by Dodi. Several investigations have disconfirmed these outlandish statements. Neil was up against a man with a proven record for outrageous falsity and utter ruthlessness.

Mr. and Mrs. Hamilton had accepted a free weekend in the Paris Ritz Hotel which Fayed owned. They acknowledged that this was true. It emerged that Mrs. Hamilton had even taken postage stamps for free from the hotel.

The Hamilton’s submitted to an exhaustive Revenue and Customs investigation of their finances and tax affairs. They came out of it smelling of roses.

In the June of 1995 Jon Major made a shock announcement. He resigned as leader of the party. But he had not resigned as PM. It was a back me or sack me move. He was fed up to the back teeth of all the carping. His resignation triggered a leadership contest in the Conservative Party. It was hoped by many on the right of the party that Michael Portillo who was Secretary of State for Defence would contest the leadership. Some Portillistas set up a campaign HQ and even installed extra telephone lines. But he did not stand and instead remained in the Cabinet and asked people to vote for Major. John Redwood resigned as Secretary of State for Wales and he stood against Major. Neil remained enamoured of Portillo despite Portillo letting him down in 1995. Indeed in 2001 when Portillo sought the Tory leadership he lost out on getting into the ballot of ordinary party members by one vote. Neil then expressed his sympathy for Portillo and said it was a pity that Portillo had not won.

Neil was bitterly disappointed with Major’s spinelessness and Europhilia. Under Major there was a sense that direction had been lost. He had no vision for the country. He was also as accident prone as can be. Neil lent his full support to Redwood. Redwood was seen to be too right wing. With a D.Phil from Oxford he was clearly and alpha mind but he was distinctly lacking in emotional intelligence. One journalist said that Redwood came across as a space alien in human form. His supporters were accused of being swivel eyed loons and foam flecked fanatics. Tony Marlow in his striped blazer came in for particular execration.

In the end Major won the votes of about 75% of Tory MPs. But he was not to survive as leader of the party for two more years.

In the mid-1990s the Tory Party was mired in allegations of sleaze. The press was extremely hostile to the party. Neil was savaged by the gutter press.

The Guardian is the United Kingdom’s main left wing broadsheet newspaper. The Guardian excoriated Neil as ‘a liar and a cheat’ in a screaming headline. The left wing media had successfully depicted him as Mr. Sleaze. It was a perception that was very difficult to correct because of the Semmelweis Reflex. Once people get a notion in their minds it is all but impossible to disabuse them of this misapprehension even if one presents a mountain of the most irrefragable evidence.

In 1996 Neil and he co-claimant withdrew their libel action. They were panned for this in the press.

Conservative Central Office lent on Neil not to stand in the 1997 election. They said that even if he was innocent he was attracting enormous amounts of hostile press coverage. This was preventing the Conservative message getting out. They asked him if he would please announce that he would not seek re-election for the good of the party. Neil adamantly refused to do so. He was innocent and he would let his constituents vindicate him.

Tatton was the fourth safest Conservative seat in the UK. Neil had won in 1992 by 16 000 votes. His position seemed unassailable in spite of the extremely negative reportage on him in most of the press. But being misportrayed by the media for several years was taking a toll on Neil’s standing in the constituency.

The Parliamentary Standard Commissioner investigated Neil. Neil’s withdrawal of his libel action seemed to some to be confirmatory of his guilt. Some Tory MPs begged him to step aside but he would not budge. In those days CCO had no say whatsoever over whom a local Conservative Association picked as its candidate. Neil is perhaps the single greatest reason why CCO now has the legal power to block local Conservative associations from selecting candidates whom CCO finds uncongenial.

There was much unease in Tatton Conservative Association. Nevertheless, the majority of Tatton Tories stuck with Neil. They believed him to be the victim of a leftist smear campaign. His chief accuser was a pathological liar. Never trust a man who cannot even tell the truth about his own name of year of birth.

In April 1997 it was time for the Tatton Conservative Association to choose their candidate for the upcoming election. 182 Conservatives voted for Neil to be their candidate. 35 voted against him. There were 100 abstentions. That was not the ringing endorsement he wanted. Only 55% of Conservatives in the constituency had voted for him.

There were two other Conservative MPs who were dogged by sleaze allegations. They were Piers Merchant and Allan Stewart. Stewart sat for a seat in Scotland. Merchant had been the President of the Durham Union and by 1997 was the MP for Beckenham in Kent. The married middle aged Tory was having an affair with a 17 year old nightclub hostess named Anna Cox. An ICM poll for the Observer newspaper showed that Merchant and Stewart were both fairly popular in their seats in but that Neil’s popularity had evaporated. But many in Tatton viewed Neil as a slimeball.

For 3 years Neil had braved brutal headlines almost every single day. It proves how indomitable he is that he stood up to such bile from the media.

Jonathan Aitken – the Conservative MP for Thanet – was also facing allegations of taking unethical payments from Mohammed Fayed. At the time the scandal broke he was Chief Secretary to the Treasury. He was spoken of as a future Prime Minister. A 6’4’’ lean marathon runner with chiseled features – he looked like a leader. He had impeccable establishment credentials – he was the son of a Canadian peer who was a war hero; he was the nephew of a newspaper magnate, Aitken also had an Eton and Oxford education behind him.  He had been a Fleet Street journalist and a war correspondent in Vietnam. He had once been the toast of the media for defending the free press and even being willing to risk prison for doing so. Jonathan Aitken was an Anglican lay preacher.  He had even been the boyfriend of Thatcher’s only daughter – Carol. Aitken dumped Carol because he was two-timing her: unbeknownst to Carol he was also going out with a Yugoslavian blonde named Lolicia. Aitken proposed to Lolicia and jilted Carol. People later asked Mrs. Thatcher why should would never give this talented young backbench MP a government post. Margaret Thatcher would never promote Aitken despite the blandishments of his many admirers. Why? He made Carol cry.

He had midwifed arms deals with Saudi Arabia which had netted him millions. Some felt that his eagerness to sell weapons to a cruel Islamist tyranny flew in the face of his much vaunted Christian faith. Saudi Arabia did not allow Christian worship. Anyone caught with a Bible or conducting prayer meetings would spend years in a fetid dungeon. The Saudi Government promoted anti-Christian forces in Sudan and the Philippines. How could a Christian defend such a regime? It seemed that Aitken had no conscience. He had a moral standard. His arms deal commission fee was a very high moral standard. Somehow money salved his qualms. His sexual infidelity did not sit well with his pharisaical posturing either.

A documentary called Jonathan of Arabia suggested that he had pimped for Arab princelings. The relentless press attacks in Aitken led to him eventually agreeing to resign. His presence in Cabinet was at the very least a distraction from the government’s message.

Aitken insisted he had not done so and he had paid for his stay in the Paris Ritz which was then owned by the Egyptian grocer. Mr. Aitken claimed his daughter and his Yugoslav wife Lolicia were with him Paris at the material time.  Aitken unwisely took out a libel action against the Guardian newspaper. Aitken pressured his teenage daughter into perjurious statements to help him out of a tight corner. In the end Guardian journalists were able to obtain records that proved that Mrs. Aitken and her daughter had lodged in a hotel in Switzerland on the night in question and thus could not possibly have been in Paris.

Jonathan Aitken swore on the Holy Bible before testifying in court. As he was a self-professed Christian who often preached in the Church of England it is particularly horrifying that he profaned the Christian faith by perjuring himself when he had sworn on the Good Book to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. His statements in court were proven to be false.

The Guardian later celebrated Aitken’s downfall. The headline was He lied and lied and lied.

Luke Harding is the Guardian scribbler who make Aitken his quarry over several years. He published a deeply disobliging biography of the Conservative cabinet minister. Aitken had the unenviable distinction of being the first politician to have a biography of him published titled The Liar.

Aitken was later sent down for perjury. His memoir Pride and Perjury is a riveting read and gives a sense of what the era was like for doom-stricken Tories. Aitken had always been a practicing Anglican. He really found Jesus anew in prison. When he came out he went to Oxford forty years after taking his first degree. Aitken was later ordained a Church of England priest.

In 1997 the election was called. The BBC journalist Martin Bell stood against Neil. Bell was then famous for his reportage from Yugoslavia in the midst of its wars. He had been shot whilst finishing a broadcast. This had made him a public hero. Bell was seen as the voice of reason and unpolitical. The media coverage of Martin Bell’s campaign was entirely favourable. His campaign was helped by the presence of his outstandingly nubile blonde daughter. Bell insisted on wearing a white suit throughout the campaign as if it were indicative of his purity. There was a media circus around him. Labour and the Lib Dems knew they had little chance of taking Tatton even though the press was almost universally negative towards Neil. But Labour and the Lib Dems knew that the Tories could lose the seat. Labour and the Lib Dems therefore withdrew their candidates. This gave Bell a clear run.

Had Labour and the Lib Dems not withdrawn their candidates then Neil would very likely have retained the seat albeit narrowly. Conversely, had Bell not stood but Labour and the Lib Dems fielded candidates then again it is highly probable that Neil would still have saved his seat but again not by a large margin.

Bell stood as the anti-corruption candidate. Neil disliked this label intensely and said it was deeply disingenuous. He wanted to ask Bell a question on camera. Neil sought out his challenger. Bell and Neil met each other on Knutsford Common and had a famous exchange filmed by the TV cameras. Neil’s insouciance was incredible. Neil said that by Martin Bell calling himself ‘anti-corruption’ this unmistakably implied that Neil was corrupt. Christine harangued Martin Bell. This transformed her from an unknown into a celebrity. Neil was remarkably restrained and courteous. Bell said he was independent and not anti-corruption. He extended the presumption of innocence to Neil. Neil then welcomed Bell as an independent candidate.

Labour possibly committed a grave blunder in withdrawing its candidate in Tatton. For Labour, Neil was a gift that kept on giving. As long as Neil was an MP the newspapers would be full of the headline ‘’Tory sleaze.’’ But if he was booted out of Parliament then he would no longer be so closely associated with the party. Strangely, Neil was worth more to Labour in Parliament than out of it. It was actually in Labour’s interests for Neil to win his seat. Depriving the Conservatives of one more seat was of negligible importance in an election where Labour was predicted to win and did win a staggering majority.

Bill Roach was a local celebrity from his role in the long running soap opera Coronation Street. He turned up to campaign for Neil. Neil still had friends in high places.

In the wee hours of 2 May the result was announced by the returning officer. Neil’s massive majority had been overturned. Bell beat him by a staggering 11 000 votes. It was a swing of an unprecedented 48%. Martin Bell won an unprecedented 60% of the vote. No one in Tatton had ever won by that much. There were three ‘independent conservatives’ who also stood as well as the usual collection of loonies who stand in high profile seats.

Martin Bell was Britain’s first independent MP in decades. Neil remained ever defiant. He swore he would be back in Parliament one day.

Bell served one term as MP for Tatton. He vowed he would not seek a second one. In 2001 he stood in Brentwood and Ongar against another Conservative. Bell said this was because the local Conservative Association had been taken over by a religious cult. It was staggering that he stood against a Conservative again when there were many pathological liars on the Labour benches – mainly Tony Blair. This time Bell was unsuccessful.

On 3 July 1997 the Downey report was published. It said that Neil had taken cash for questions. It specifically said that Neil had even been paid in brown paper envelopes. The Independent newspaper reported on it extensively. It suggested that the new Tory supremo William Hague expel Neil from his party if the Tories were ever to expunge the disgrace that clung to them.

The Downey Report savaged Michael Grylls and Michael Brown. Michael Grylls was an ex Royal Marines officer and then the MP for Chertsey and the father of Bear Grylls who is now Chief Scout.

The issue of Neil Hamilton remained divisive for several years in the constituency. In 1999 George Osborne sought to be selected as the Conservative candidate for the seat. The 28 year old Osborne was the heir to a wallpaper fortune. He had been educated at St Paul’s and Oxford. After a stint as a struggling political journalist he had worked for Tory Central Office. He found it prudent not to voice an opinion on Neil Hamilton. Some association members remained devoted to Neil. There were others who reviled him. Osborne went on to be elected in 2001. He later served as Chancellor of the Exchequer.

Out of Parliament

John Major resigned as leader of the Conservative Party immediately after the electoral defeat. He stayed on in a caretaker capacity until such time as a replacement could be elected. William Hague was duly elected leader in June 1997. Hague was one of the youngest Tory MPs aged only 35. He was also the former Secretary of State for Wales. Hague was then dating a civil servant in the Welsh Office: Ffion. These days this would be considered deeply inappropriate. His Welsh connection did not endear him to Neil Hamilton.

Hague believed that the party badly needed to move on from the scandal-struck Major years. He implored Neil not to attend the 1997 conference. The Conservatives needed him there like they needed a hole in the head. Neil bowed to Hague’s entreaty and agreed not to show his face at the party conference.

On 9 May 1997 – five days after he lost his seat – Neil was on Have I Got News for You. Angus Deayton was the host of the penal game show. Deayton wore a white suit for the only ever time – it was redolent of Martin Bell’s white suit that he famously sported in the Tatton election. The Hamilton’s were paid their fee in brown paper envelopes. Neil hit back, ‘’I’ve found its much better making political jokes than being one.’’

Neil chose not to return to practice at the bar. He was sick of what he called ‘’a constipated profession’’ and said he would not be able to contain himself when dealing with judges – he would tell members of the bench what he really thought of them. What Neil and Christine did have was an awful lot of publicity. They started to monetize this.

In 1999 the Oxford University Conservative Association (OUCA) invited Neil and Christine to be guests of honour at their termly dinner. OUCA was well known for holding ‘OUCA-holic’ events. The President of the Association was an eccentric alcoholic high camp homosexual of reactionary leanings named Steven Philip Doody. The boozy dinner went well enough. They then repaired to Steven’s set of rooms in Balliol College, Oxford for the after party. They were all well-oiled!

The Oxford Student newspaper published an article on the after party in Balliol. The headlined proclaimed ‘OUCA lurch to Reich wing.’

The after party involved choruses of songs in questionable taste such as a song to the melody of ‘Dashing through the snow’. The lyrics go: ‘dashing through the Reich/ In a black Mercedes benz/ killing lots of kikes/ rat a tat at at/ Mow ze buggers down/ Oh what fun it is to be/ ze SS in ze town/ Oh lebensraum/ lebensraum…’ This revolting song joking about the Holocaust was not considered ideal publicity for the new and inclusive Conservative Party. No one has said that Neil or Christine ever participated in singing these anti-Semitic songs or even knew the lyrics.

Christine by her own admission goes for anything in trousers. There was a law undergraduate from Christ Church named Will Goodhand. Christine and Will got along very well indeed! They snogged. On seeing this some Oxonians said, ‘’do it again for the camera.’’ The canoodling couple happily obliged. At the time Will was 19 and Christine was 50. So she was a bit young by Will’s standards!

The photo was sold to the Sun newspaper for several thousand pounds. That was a very tidy sum in 1999. Bear in mind undergraduate fees were GBP 1 000 per annum back then.

‘A minging Tory snog’ was the headline splashed across the front page of the Sun. Will Goodhand was seeing snogging Chirstine Hamilton.

The Hamiltons said those who had stooped so low as to sell this photo to the Sun ought to be ‘osctracised.’ Mrs. Hamilton commented that ‘’if he thinks that was a snog then he has a lot to learn.’’

Will Goodhand went along with the Sun and posed for photos with a Page Three girl. The article said he took her on a date punting and to dinner. The latter part is not true but they paid for Will to dine on his own. Will was later an unsuccessful Conservative parliamentary candidate and a semi-successful radio DJ.

On 16 January 1997 Mohammed Fayed went on the Channel 4 documentary Dispatches. Fayed said that Neil had been given cash payments totally GBP 110 000 over several years and had been given Harrod’s gift vouchers free of charge as well as being allowed to stay at the Paris Ritz for free on a long weekend in 1987. All this was in payment for Neil asking questions for Fayed in the House of Commons. Neil always admitted that he had stayed in the Paris Ritz Hotel at Fayed’s expense but insisted that there was no impropriety involved in accepting the free hospitality.

In 1999 Martin Bell MP went to address the Oxford Union. His predecessor as the MP for Tatton decided to surprise Mr. Bell. Neil is a life member of the Cambridge Union. There is reciprocity of membership or one might even say mutuality between the Oxford Union and the Cambridge Union. Neil and Christine attended the meeting and sat in the front row much to Bell’s chagrin. He was egregiously discombobulated to see them there. At the Union Neil’s old chum Fr David Johnson entertained him royally. The late Fr Johnson was then on the Standing Committee of the Oxford Union. He was its oldest ever member aged 45.

On 31 July 1998 Neil’s libel action was given a court listing. Though Neil was a barrister himself he chose not to defend himself. Defamation was not his area of law. He had many supporters who contributed most liberally to his legal fighting fund.

Neil still had friends in high places. Lord Harris of High Cross donated to Neil Hamilton’s libel action fund as he had done in 1984. Taki contributed to his legal costs as did Lord Harris of High Cross. The Earl of Portsmouth also contributed. Gerald Howarth MP contributed as did Gyles Brandreth (former Tory MP for Chester and television show presenter), the right wing curmudgeon journalist Simon Heffer, Lord Bell and Peter Clarke. There were only 165 Tory MPs left in 1997 and 40 of them contributed to the fighting fund. That was a staggering level of support given the wall to wall vitriol against Neil in the popular press. Over GBP 410 000 was raised. Libel is an astonishingly expensive business. A single day in court with a junior barrister will set you back at least several thousand pounds.

Defamation cases can be heard by a judge or by a jury. If the parties cannot agree which way the case will be tried then the judge shall determine which means of trying the case will be serve the interests of justice. The trouble with a jury is that Neil’s name had been dragged through the mire for years before the case opened. Therefore many jurors may have been prejudiced against him. The press had been traducing him and it would be very hard for jurors to put this out of their minds.

If Neil won the case his reputation would be restored, he would win hundreds of thousands of pounds in compensation and he could get his seat back. Neil and Christine were bullish about their chances of winning. That is suggestive of innocence. Why would they stake everything on it if they were culpable?

In November 1999 the trial began. The judge had to ascertain that the jury was not biased. Fayed owned Fulham Football Club. He asked if there were any Fulham supporters on the jury. To public amusement it emerged that none of them were Fulham fans.

In the case Fayed was asked why he called himself Al Fayed when his surname was actually ‘Fayed’. ‘’Call me Al Capone if you liked’’ he quipped to gales of laughter.

Fayed repeated his claim in court that Neil had been paid cash in brown paper envelopes sometimes these were handed to Neil by Fayed’s staff and sometime the payments were made via Ian Greer.  Neil repeated his denial that he had ever accepted an ob from Fayed, either directly or via an intermediary but said it was true that he had stayed in Fayed’s hotel for free. The counsel for Neil said that Fayed’s false statements had ruined Neil’s good name.

Fayed hired the foremost QC of the day: George Carman. Mohammed Fayed was in the witness box against Neil. The case lasted 6 weeks. Jonathan Aitken is another former Conservative MP who was hit with sleaze allegations. Aitken described being cross-examined by Carman as being ‘’carmanised.’’ Carman is the only barrister whose name became a verb! He was a fearsome advocate. Carman had had his old university friend Jeremy Thorpe sensationally acquitted of conspiracy to murder in 1979. Thorpe was the erstwhile leader of the Liberal Party.

Neil and Christine were both cross-examined by the fearsome George Carman QC. Carman QC asked Neil if he had been corrupt in 1989 when he asked Mobil Oil for GBP 10 000 to table an amendment on a finance bill. Neil was then on the House of Commons Select Committee on Finance.

George Carman QC the continued to cross examine Neil. Neil would usually gave lengthy answers that to some gave an impression of chicanery. Carman would then snort contumeliously, ‘’you finished?’’ Surprisingly the judge did not reprimand Carman for such ungentlemanly conduct. But Neil’s loquacity appeared to be his undoing. It seemed to have a negative impact on the jury’s view of him.

There was some sympathy for Fayed so soon after his son’s death. The public, particularly in London, was still egregiously anti-Conservative. This may have prejudiced the jury.

On 21 December 1999 the jury found for Fayed on the basis of justification. His utterances regarding Neil were held to be substantially veracious. Neil was branded corrupt.

Neil and his wife came out of the Royal Courts of Justice. They appeared as though they were gazing into hell. He had bet the bank on winning the case and restoring his reputation and political career. Now he was doomed. Down into the abyss he would have to go. Some people would have been driven to suicide by this calamity.

Neil appealed and lost. He sought leave to appeal again this time to the House of the Lords which at the time functioned as the Supreme Court. Leave was denied.

On 27 May 2001 Neil declared bankruptcy. This was because he was unable to pay his legal fees and Fayed’s costs. These amounted to a staggering GBP 3 million. Being a bankrupt this forfended practicing at the bar or being an MP. Neil vowed that Fayed would not get a penny. All his earnings went to his goodwife because she was not bankrupt. He was discharged from bankruptcy three years later.

On 30 March 2000 Neil went on Da Ali G Show which was then brand new. It was hosted by Sacha Baron-Cohen in his persona of Ali G – a racially ambivalent shell suit wearing educationally subnormal rude boy, capo of the West Staines Massive who poses as a petty drug dealer but in fact comes from a boringly bourgeois background. In it Ali G proffers a cannabis cigarette to Neil which he happily smoked.

In a later edition of Da Ali G Show the guest was Mohammed Fayed. In it Ali G asked the Egyptian shopkeeper what he would say to Neil Hamilton if Neil were there. Fayed replied, ‘’Nothing. To me he is nothing.’’ Ali G then claimed that Neil had said he had seen Fayed wearing women’s lingerie. Fayed denied it and said ‘’he is the one who is doing that. He is very well known for that.’’ Ironically Neil did appear in ladies undergarments years later as part of a theatrical production. That was the Rocky Horror Show where he wore high heels and a basque.

There were still some political groups who were keen to hear from Neil. The Springbok Club invited Neil to address them. The club was for South Africans resident in the Home Counties. They displayed the apartheid era South African colours. Mr. Hamilton said he was pleased to speak in front of the ‘’true flag of South Africa.’’ Leftists took it as an endorsement of racialism.

After 2001 the Hamilton’s had to rebuild their financial position. They appeared on numerous quiz shows. They were on celebrity ‘Who wants to be a millionaire?’ to raise money for charity. When they underperformed Christine was visibly distressed at having let down needy people.

The couple appeared on posh nosh and other shows.

Neil and Christine traveled to the Republic of Ireland because they were invited on The Late, Late Show. The show was the most popular chat show on Radio Telefis Eireann (RTE) which is the Irish Republic’s principal channel. On RTE they were interviewed by the late Gay Byrne. Gabriel ‘Gay’ Bryne was Ireland’s foremost presenter for decades. Before going on air the couple had addressed the Law Society of University College Dublin (UCD). There were plenty UCD law undergraduates in the studio audience and they afforded the Hamilton’s a very hearty welcome.

Neil wrote an enthralling booked titled Great Political Eccentrics. He also penned another engrossing tome called Politics’ Strangest Characters. Did Neil write whereof he knew? He has never been accused of normality.

The Hamilton’s sold their Cheshire home for GBP 1.25 million. That was a very tidy sum at the time more like GBP 3 million in the values of 2023.

Upon selling their Cheshire domicile the Hamilton’s shifted to Hullavington, Wiltshire in October 2004.

In When Louis Met the Hamilton’s, Neil said that he and Christine were ‘’professional objects of curiosity.’’ Some said they were a circus act.

While on When Louis Met the Hamilton’s, Neil is show exercising in Hyde Park. As he said himself he was not bad for a 51 year old man. He has never been fat.

In some shows Neil seemed himself. He was confident and garrulous as usual. On other shows he appeared to be stiff and inhibited. No all media suited him.

MacIntyre is a show fronted by an eponymous Dubliner. Mr. MacIntyre had Neil on his show when he was helping the police. They winkled out wanted criminals by sending them letters saying they had won a competition and were due to be awarded a prize. As Neil was so often seen on game shows his presence lent this cover story some credibility.

Christine acquired herself a richly deserved reputation for being an outrageous flirt. No man was safe! Women of Britain: lock up your sons! And fathers and grandfathers. In spite of her pantherine sexuality, in fairness to her, no one has ever suggested that her behaviour has gone beyond mere coquetry.

Christine and Neil often appeared in pantomimes. It turned out that they had an exceptional gift for acting. They became a stable of quiz shows. They were on the Weakest Link hosted by Anne Robinson and on Ready Steady Cook. Neil competed on a celebrity edition of Mastermind on 26 December 2004. In 2005 Neil went on 18 Stone of Idiot and he danced in a Perspex box while the morbidly obese comedian Johnny Vegas and someone else poured buckets of fish over him. The price of political failure was not too high!

The couple appeared on Loose Women. Neil said the secret of his marriage’s success was ‘’I find we get on very well if I do exactly as I am told.’’

The Guardian dubbed Neil ‘’an all-purpose Z list celebrity.’’ He was perceived as an unpolitical figure. But the Noughties he was famous for being famous. He may never has asked cash for questions. By 2000 he was being questioned for cash.

Christine Hamilton went on Have I got news for you? The satirical news quiz show. The host mercilessly lampooned the Hamilton’s. It paid their fee in brown paper envelopes. This was an allusion to how Fayed claimed he had paid Neil.

Louis Theroux then did a show called ‘when Louis met’ and he usually encountered extraordinary freaks. Louis Theroux is the British born son of the celebrated American travel writer Paul Theorux. Louis is a skinny, bespectacled, so self-assured that he is soft-spoken and unassuming chap who was educated at Westminster and Oxford. He is a man over whom women swoon.  In 2000 he did one with Neil and Christine Hamilton.

Neil blazed a trail. He was the very first ex-politician to become a star of reality TV. Since then others have sought to reinvent themselves as media figures.

In 2003 Nadine Milroy-Sloan, the false accuser, was awarded a three year prison sentence. It was a disgracefully light sentence bearing in mind the far longer sentence that would have been given to Neil had he been wrongfully convicted. She was found guilty of perverting the course of justice.

Max Clifford who had represented Miss Milroy-Sloan paid Neil a sum of money in compensation. Part of the agreement was that the figure be kept secret.

Milroy-Sloan was a habitual liar. In 2014 she was again imprisoned for falsely accusing her ex-boyfriend of threatening her with a sword.

In the summer of 2000 Neil and Christine Hamilton was falsely accused of the rape of a woman. On 10 August 2001 the couple was arrested pursuant to a rape investigation.

Christine said that this accusation was ‘’lies on stilts’’. Indeed the couple had probative evidence that they were miles away from the scene of the alleged crime at the material time. They were dining with Derek Laud who corroborated their alibi. When the investigation started the couple were being filmed for When Louis met the Hamilton’s which was part of a series wherein Louis Theroux met interesting freaks At first Louis was entirely unaware of the rape allegation. In the back of a Range Rover Neil said that they had a story for Louis and most people would charge him extra for it but that they were giving it to Louis for free when Neil dropped a bombshell saying that they had been false accused of rape.

 The Sunday Times wrote ‘’they deserve less sympathy than most’’ but acknowledged that the couple had been blackguarded. Christine read the article aloud on the reality TV show When Louis met the Hamilton’s.

Their calumniator was subsequently awarded a three year prison sentence. The publicist who did most to disseminate these utterly bogus claims was Max Clifford. Clifford was a Labour donor who later went to prison for sex crimes.

Neil and Christine went into writing.

 Great British political eccentrics is a very readable book by Neil. He is a soi-disant eccentric. In it he featured Nabbaro, Screaming Lord Sutch, Roy Jenkins and others. Neil had little sympathy for Lord Roy Jenkins whom he lampooned. Lord Jenkins of Hillhead was a Welsh Labourite who sat for an English seat. He was the Home Secretary who shepherded through a piece of legislation that has killed over ten million British children. He later split from Labour to found the Social Democratic Party (SDP). His splitting the anti-Tory vote handed the entire 1980s to the Conservative Party. Thanks Roy! He later became Chancellor of Oxford University.

Neil later wrote a thoroughly engrossing tome called Politics’ Strangest Characters. In this book he mused on the curious case of Treibitsch Lincoln. The weird and wonderful Lincoln was born into a Jewish family in Hungary. After studying at the Royal Hungarian Academic of Dramatic art he moved to the United Kingdom. He managed to have himself selected as a Liberal candidate in 1910 and was returned to Parliament. He sat there only between January and December 1910. 1910 is the only year bar 1974 in which the United Kingdom held two general elections. Lincoln’s story grew ever more bizarre. He ended up in Tibet in the 1940s where he died – possibly poisoned by German agents.

Christine published a tome titled the bumper book of Great British battleaxes.

Neil appeared in numerous shows. They have acted in pantomimes.

In 2002 the Hamilton’s resigned from the Conservative and Unionist Party after 35 years of stalwart service. They joined the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP). Nigel Farage was then one of the most prominent UKIP Members of the European Parliament. Farage recalled luncheon with the Hamilton’s. He claimed that half way through he felt a hand on his knee. It was Christine! She was a notorious man eater. It is a fate that befell even me. She ruffled my hair and twittered ‘’oh what a lovely boy you are.’’

Christine forged a media career in her own right. She has been a columnist and a television reviewer. She has been on countless talk shows. She was a star turn in I’m a celebrity get me out of here wherein she was exiled to the Australian jungle for a few weeks.

In 2003 the Hamilton’s were invited to address the sixth form of Oundle School. Their car broke down and they were unable to make it. The school wanted them so badly that it arranged another occasion for them to speak. In his oration Neil said that there was a certain level below which support for the Conservatives would not go. Rock bottom was about 30%. He made disobliging remarks about Conservative leaders – Hague and Iain Duncan Smith IDS. IDS was such a lamentable choice for leader that people joked his initials stood for ‘’in deep shit.’’

Ironically Neil had far more influence outside Parliament than he had inside it.

UKIP was keen that a household name stand for Parliament. Neil and Christine declined to do so. They said ‘’we’ve done politics.’’ They needed to earn some money and buy themselves a decent house. This they eventually succeeded in doing. They purchased a home in Wiltshire.

In 2004 Neil and Christine attended an event in Oxford to commemorate the 60^th anniversary of D Day. The fete was held in the, alas and alack, now defunct pub called the Far from the Madding Crowd on Friar’s Entry. It was organized by Rev Fr David Johnson. Present were fifty persons including the Canadian High Commissioner (‘’call me Mel’’) and the morbidly obese and bearded Luxembourgish Ambassador straight from central casting.

Neil is never short of an opinion. He said he exalts David Lloyd George as the first Welshman to rise to the office of Prime Minister and one who made the political weather for a generation. That is despite Neil disagreeing with Lloyd George’s collectivist policies which paved the way for socialism.

Tony Blair attracts particular hostility and disdain from Neil. He scorns Blair’s so called ethical foreign policy and believe that Iraq War was calamitous.

In 2006 the Hamilton’s released a song for the Football World Cup. It was titled ‘England are Jolly Dee’. That was notwithstanding neither of them caring a fig about the sport and Neil is not actually English. Nor were either of them remotely musical. Full marks for effort!

In 2008 Neil and Christine founded Vixen Consultants Limited. This dealt with their media appearance. It trades under the name of Vixen Consultants. Neil is company secretary.

By the 2010s the Hamilton’s star was waning. The days of the 1990s when they had wall to wall coverage (whether wanted or unwanted) were over. They were all but unknown to the junior generation. It was at this point that Neil decided to throw his hat into the political ring once more.

In September 2011 Neil went to UKIP’s autumn conference. Nigel Farage was then leading the party. Farage endorsed him to stand for election to the National Executive Committee of the party. Neil was elected on 1 November 2011. He then served as deputy chairman of UKIP. Neil later became campaign director in April 2014. In May 2014 he sought to be elected in Wandsworth London Borough Council. He stood for St Mary’s ward. There were 9 candidates and Neil came a distant 8^th. London is not fertile soil for UKIP. The British capital is one of the most ardently Europhile areas in the country.

Arron Banks was the main UKIP financial backer. In private emails he dubbed Neil ‘’a corrupt old Tory’’

In 2014 Neil provoked wrath once again when he said that decent BNP voters were turning to UKIP. The British National Party as recently as the 1990s was an openly white supremacist party which sought to deprive non-white Britons of their British citizenship and expel them. It had denied the Holocaust and stoked odium against Muslims. Some say there is no such thing as a decent BNP voter. But it is an objective statement of fact that quite a few people who formerly voted BNP then cast their ballots for UKIP.

On 5 May 2016 Neil stood to be a member of what was then styled the National Assembly for Wales. UKIP was riding high because of the Brexit referendum. Neil was elected as a list Member of the Senedd (MS) for Mid and West Wales. Senedd is the Welsh word for ‘parliament’. He soon became the leader of the UKIP faction in the Welsh Assembly. The Welsh Assembly was subsequently renamed the Welsh Parliament in 2020. 7 UKIP MS’s were elected to the Welsh Assembly in 2016. All of them came in via the regional list system. UKIP never had anyone elected to Cardiff for a constituency.

Just five days after being elected to the Welsh Assembly, Neil was elected leader of UKIP in the assembly. He ousted Nathan Gill. Farage was the leader of the party and criticized the move. UKIP should not be fighting UKIP. Neil said Farage should not interfere in an internal Welsh matter and said that Farage was throwing a tantrum. Neil reminded the public that Farage was a Member of the European Parliament for South-East England and had never even stood for election in Wales.

In that legislature Neil continued to vocalise his forthright views. He said he was immensely gratified to be serving in the Land of my fathers – calling to mind the Welsh patriotic song. He was the only MS not to reside in the principality. Bigots tried to exploit this to portray him as somehow an alien and unfit to represent a region of Wales.

Nathan Gill was so dischuffed at being ousted by Neil that Gill left UKIP. He sat as an independent.

Neil made a barnstorming maiden speech in the Welsh Assembly. He also dubbed Kirsty Williams and Leanne Wood ‘’concubines’’ and said they were in a harem. Feminists were not best pleased. The talentless ex-social worker Leanne Wood was a Plaid Cymru MS and later became leader of the party. Stroppy, far left, eurofanatic, politically correct, anti-monarchist, bigoted and viciously intolerant – la Wood was not exactly Neil’s cup of cha.

A loony leftist MS named Eluned Morgan said that Brexit would hurt the poorest most. Neil Hamilton unkindly blurted out ‘’suicide’s an option.’’ The Presiding Officer called upon Neil to say sorry. He declined to do so, ‘’what is there to apologise for? What was unparliamentary about the remark?’’ In the end he said, ‘’I apologise for whatever remark I am supposed to have made.’’

Neil courted controversy in 2018 by speaking up for the late Enoch Powell. Powell had been the Conservative MP for Wolverhampton South-West and later an Ulster Unionist MP for Down South. Powell was notorious for his 1968 Rivers of Blood oration in which he said that non-white immigration was an existential threat to the United Kingdom. Powell was defended by Neil and said that Powell was no ghoul. Neil said that while large scale racial violence that Powell had forecast had not transpired, Powell was correct inasmuch as social change had been wrought by mass immigration and it was unwanted by most of the UK populace. Neil said that Powell was right to speak up for ordinary people when the elite chose to disregard these well-founded concerns.

Leanne Wood then denounced Neil saying that he was keeping racism alive. A Labour assemblyman said that Neil’s remarks were outrageous.

In 2019 Neil stood in a by-election in Newport West. He came third and polled a respectable 8.6%. Newport West had been a Labour seat for a century.

In 2020 the BLM movement began to demand that some statutes be taken down in Wales when the statute was a likeness of someone who had been involved in the slave trade. BLM wanted a statue of Mr. Pickton removed from Cardiff City Hall and Pickton Street renamed. They also sought the removal of another statue in Carmarthen. To Neil’s eternal credit he refused to be morally blackmailed by the racism industry.

Neil vociferously argued that the statue ought to remain in situ and that Pickton Street retain its name. He denounced BLM as Marxist and said it aimed at the erasure of Wales’ heritage. BLM proposed to put a statue of George Floyd in room of Pickton. Floyd was murdered by the police in the USA. Neil accused Floyd of being a drug peddler.

Unfortunately there is a rising tide of far left bigots demanding the abolition of British national pride. Neil set his face like flint against these socialists seditionists.

In 2020 Freddy Vachha, the UKIP leader, was forced out. Neil became acting leader of UKIP. He later became its substantive leader.

In 2021 Neil was the only UKIP representative other than local councilors.

In 2021 in the election to the Welsh Parliament, Neil chose not to seek re-election in Mid and West Wales. Instead he stood in South Wales East. It was possible a mistake. He was top of UKIP’s regional list.

BBC Wales held a main leaders’ debate. However. They did not invite the UKIP leader on saying that it was a minor party. Neil was invited to speak in a minor leaders’ debate alongside the leaders of the Green Party and Reform UK.

Neil stood in Islwyn. This was the onetime Labour leader Neil Kinnock’s former bailiwick. But Hamilton performed worse than the other Neil! He polled only 507 votes – coming 6^th.

All UKIP politicians failed to be elected to the Welsh Parliament.

In 2018 Neil was himself pushed out as UKIP leader in the Welsh Assembly. He was supplanted by Caroline Jones.

In 2018 the then leader of UKIP Gerard Batten said that a vote would be held to elect the UKIP leader in Wales. Whoever won would lead the party’s delegation in the Welsh Assembly and would be the Cymric voice of the party. Gareth Bennett MS, Miss Jones and Neil Hamilton all contested it. Bennett won. Nonetheless, Hamilton said he respected Bennett and would cooperate with him.

On 12 September 2020 Neil was elected leader of the UK Independence Party. He won 498 votes out of 631. That meant 79% of the total vote. He defeated John Poynton. Membership had collapsed. Most talented and ambitious UKIPers had decamped to the newly founded Brexit Party (now called Reform UK). That included the sometime leader of UKIP – Nigel Farage.

When Neil took over UKIP was in poor shape. The membership had fallen off a cliff. Its finances were shocking. As Brexit had happened it seemed that UKIP had lost its raison d’etre. People were bored rigid of the EU issue. But Neil insisted that the Tory Brexit had been half-hearted at best. In spite of Neil’s most valiant efforts, UKIP is largely a one man band. It has trouble garnering much media attention. Neil does his level best to keep the UKIP show on the road. But the membership is elderly, donations are paltry and public opinion is shifting towards seeking readmission to the EU. In truth the party shall probably not long survive him.

In 2021 Neil was ‘liberated’ in his own words from the Welsh Parliament.

In 2022 he attended the memorial service of Fr. David Johnson.

When Brexit came Neil believed that the United Kingdom had benefitted precious little therefrom. He wanted a hard Brexit and argued that the United Kingdom has not used its Brexit freedoms fully. Nonetheless, he was impressed by Boris Johnson’s drive and ambition. Neil has thought aloud about rejoining the Conservative Party but concluded, ‘’I am a bit long in the tooth to do that.’’

The UKIP position on Ukraine is that Ukraine must free itself from Russian aggression and tyranny. The United Kingdom must back Kyiv to the hilt.

Neil expressed his disagreement with reparations for slavery. He said it is ludicrous. He also disagrees with taking down statues of those who trafficked in slaves. This would lead to the razing of all Roman architecture.

By 2022 Christine had had enough of being in the media spotlight. She voiced her desire to leave all that behind and to finally regain some privacy. A quarter of a century as a public figure has been more than enough.

One of the happiest and most marvelous things Neil has achieved and the thing that has sustained him through many disasters, is his marriage. Adversity appears only to have drawn the couple closer when it would have sundered many other marriages. It is surely one of the most resoundingly successful celebrity marriages of the present day. The Hamilton’s have plenty of sworn enemies. But even their most implacable foes have never accused the Hamilton’s of being unfaithful to the marital bed. What extraordinary serendipity that these star crossed lovers should have met so young

Did Neil ask cash for questions? He has never wavered in his denials in over 29 years. Perhaps finally he ought to be believed.

A peerage for this political titan is long overdue.

Monosyllabic answers are almost never right. Give answer plus one. That is to say supply the information requested and then a little bit more. In the case of the question being:

”Do you have any siblings?”

”Yes” is not enough. Say, ”Yes, I do. I have two sisters both younger than me.”

Below are some imaginary answers. Adapt as necessary. The aim is to come across as a polite, intelligent, well-spoken, truthful and eloquent person.

Candidates need to present themselves well by speaking at the right pace and volume while maintaining eye contact. Eye contact does not mean a death stare! Glancing away to think for a moment is entirely acceptable.

The answers below are not ‘right’ as such. The right answer must be the honest one. The idea is to present oneself in a positive manner by speaking grammatically and giving the right amount of detail.

Some of the following questions overlap. If they ask ‘What sports do you like’ the interviews will probably not need to follow up with ‘Tell me about your sporting achievements.’

==============

SMALL TALK

Hello, How are you?

I am very well thank you and how are you?

—————-

How was your flight?

It was fine – the airline was pretty good. 

——————

Which hotel are you staying at?

I am staying at —- and it is quite comfortable. I am happy with it.

============

BACKGROUND.

Where are you from?

I am from city, country. It is in the south of the country. 

——————

What are your parents’ jobs?

My mother is an architect and my father is a bank manager.

——————

How is your country different from this one?

Well there are some cultural differences such as our food is quite different. We are much more respectful to old people. I like the way lessons are more fun here. 

——————–

What is school like in your country?

In some ways it is quite different. We do a lot more Mathematics. We have to remember things a lot more and not explain things so much.

———————–

Where do you go to school?

I go to Ludgrove School, it in Berkshire. 

——————-

Do you have any sisters or brothers?

No, I am an only child but I am close to my cousins.

—————-

Might any of your siblings join us here at this school one day?

Well, I do not have siblings but my cousin might come here if I do. She is asking about the school. 

======================

ADMISSIONS TESTS

Which  subjects did you do in the admissions tests?

I did Non-Verbal Reasoning, Verbal Reasoning, English and Maths.

———————-

How did they go?

English went very well. It was a fun paper. Non-Verbal Reasoning was fine too: I finished early and then went back to check my answers. Verbal Reasoning was not as easy but I got through it. Maths was a little bit hard.

———————-

You have some admissions tests coming up. How do you feel about them?

I am taking them seriously but I am not worried.

======================

EXTRA CURRICULAR ACTIVITIES

What three words best describe you?

Hardworking, polite and well-behaved.

————

Are you musical?

Yes, I play the piano. I am grade 3 right now and I want to do more grades.

———————-

Do you like acting?

No, not really. I do Drama at my current school but I am not great at it.

——————–

What sports do you like?

I like to play rugby and I like rowing. I am scrum captain. Rugby is really fun and we won most of our matches. 

—————–

Tell me about your sporting achievements?

Yes, sure. I am scrum captain of the rugby team. We beat our rival school 78-0. I scored two tries in that match. 

—————–

What are your hobbies?

I am a voracious reader. I write stories for pleasure. I like to go camping with my family. I adore swimming in the sea. I go cycling every day. 

—————-

What do you do in your free time?

I like to read fiction. I also write some stories of my own. I like to cycle. I like to swim and socialise. I go camping with my family sometimes.

—————-

Which instruments would you like to play here?

I already play the piano but I am not that good at it. I might try the violin. 

—————

What grade are you in those instruments?

I am third grade in the violin and I have been learning it for 3 years. 

————-

Would you want to join the choir?

I would like to try, yes. 

===================

THE SCHOOL

Why do you want to come to this school?

Because this school is such an old and famous school. So many famous people have been here [names]. The teachers are fantastic and the school gets outstanding exam results. The school will give me a good chance to go to an excellent university.  The ancient buildings are beautiful and the school has got a fantastic location. That means you play a lot of matches against other schools and we can go to the theatre a lot. There is a fantastic theatre here. I know you have a half Olympic size swimming pool and amazing sports facilities. You play sports here every day. There is a brilliant orchestra and choir. Some of my friends from my school came here. I met one of your teachers last year when she gave a talk at my school and she was a very nice woman. You have a huge library and a great IT room. The school is quite international and I can make friends with people from all sorts of countries. The boarding houses are really comfortable. It is a very friendly atmosphere.

—————-

What are your favourite subjects?

 I like English and French the most. I see how the two languages help each other. 

——————

Which subjects do you find difficult?

I am not that good at Science. 

————–

What are you doing to improve in those subjects?

I take extra time over my homework. My parents have got me a tutor who comes once a week. I sometimes ask my class teacher for more guidance.

====================

CURRENT SCHOOL AND ATTITUDES?

Are you well behaved?

Yes, certainly. I always obey the rules.

—————-

Have you ever been suspended or punished?

No, never. My behaviour is excellent. 

—————-

How should pupils behave towards teachers?

Pupils should be very respectful. I am like that. I always obey teachers. Pupils must always do their homework on time and pay attention in lessons. 

——————-

Can you recognise when you have done wrong and apologise?

Yes, sure. Sometimes I am wrong and I admit it. I say sorry. 

—————–

How good are you about doing your homework?

I am pretty good at it. I almost always do it on time.

——————-

Do you like your present school? Why or why not?

 Yes, it is quite good. The teachers are mostly very good. There are lots of sports to play. But I am ready to move on to a bigger school with more things to do. 

=======================

MOVING ON TO A NEW SCHOOL

How do you feel about boarding?

I feel positive about it. It will help me mature and make really close friends. There are also more activities at boarding schools. 

————–

This school has a Christian ethos and you must attend chapel. How do you feel about that?

Yes, that is fine. Even though I am not  from a Christian family I do not mind attending chapel at all. I like the music and its educational.

—————

Do you know any pupils already in our school?

Yes, a few people who left my school last year are already there. They say it is a tremendous school.

——————

What do you know about this school?

It was founded in 1820 by Mr Baird. It is well known and some politicians and writers went here. It gets terrific exam results. There is a ski trip every Christmas. The school is really keen on Music. 

——————-

Might you want to join the CCF?

Yes, I would. It seems really fun. I want to see what the army is like.

————

How would you feel about being the only one of your nationality here?

I really like the fact that there are lots of nationalities here. I am a global citizen. 

—————–

This school is very international. Do you like that?

Yes, I do. I have been to a few other countries. I really like meeting people from other countries. 

————–

Which other schools might you apply to?

I will apply to Harrow, Uppingham and Caterham.

————

Are we your first choice?

Yes, you are my top choice!

—————

If you do not get in where will you go?

Probably I will go to Uppingham.

—————-

This is a mixed school – how do you feel about that?

I like that. It is more human. It is good to socialise with boys and girls. It prepares people for adult life. 

————–

This is a single sex school: how do you feel about that?

It is good because there is less distraction. People are freer to be themselves and not worry about what the opposite sex thinks.

——————-

Do you have any questions for me?

Yes, I do. Would it be possible to play rugby and football in the autumn term or do I pick just one?

==========================

LONG TERM FUTURE.

What do you want to do after you finish school?

I want to go on to university and study maybe English or French. I really love learning and I know that I need a degree so I can get an enjoyable and well paid job. 

——————-

What job do you want to do?

 I am not sure. It is so far away. Perhaps become a journalist but I would need to do an internship first.

=============================

CHALLENGING QUESTIONS

Who is the best teacher you have ever had?

The best teacher I ever had was Miss Jordan. She taught us English. She was very fun and really inspiring. We all liked and respected her so there was no misbehaviour. She taught me more in one week than someone else taught me in one year. Miss Jordan had a very clear way of explaining things. 

What is Brexit?

Brexit means British exit. It is about the UK leaving the European Union. Britain voted to leave in a referendum but almost half the country is against it. It might be bad for the economy but it is too early to be sure. 

What do you think of Donald Trump?

Donald Trump is a very controversial politician. He was President of the United States and he set a bad example by being rude to people and lying a lot. Some people adore him and at least he did not start any wars. 

Should we abolish homework?

No, we need to do some independent study. Plus there is not enough time to do everything in school. Sometimes we need to memorise vocabulary lists or write up science experiments and it is better to do that at home. 

If could change one thing about your school what would it be?

My school is fabulous but we could do with a larger swimming pool. So if I had enough money I would build that. It would also be brilliant if we could learn Chinese because that is a language that is becoming increasingly important. 

Tell me an interesting fact that you learnt recently?

My teacher just told us that Charles Dickens was the most popular writer in the world in his lifetime. It is surprising because Dickens’ novels are really hard to read.

Is it right for parents to select the sex of their baby?

No, it would be wrong. People should accept  their baby no matter what the sex. Girls are just as good as boys. 

If you could invent a machine what would it be able to do?

I would invent a machine that would make me be able to bring back people from the dead. I really miss my great grandmother. I would love to be with her again.

Monosyllabic answers are almost never right. Give answer plus one. That is to say supply the information requested and then a little bit more. In the case of the question being:

”Do you have any siblings?”

”Yes” is not enough. Say, ”Yes, I do. I have two sisters both younger than me.”

Below are some imaginary answers. Adapt as necessary. The aim is to come across as a polite, intelligent, well-spoken, truthful and eloquent person.

Candidates need to present themselves well by speaking at the right pace and volume while maintaining eye contact. Eye contact does not mean a death stare! Glancing away to think for a moment is entirely acceptable.

The answers below are not ‘right’ as such. The right answer must be the honest one. The idea is to present oneself in a positive manner by speaking grammatically and giving the right amount of detail.

Some of the following questions overlap. If they ask ‘What sports do you like’ the interviews will probably not need to follow up with ‘Tell me about your sporting achievements.’

==============

SMALL TALK

Hello, How are you?

I am very well thank you and how are you?

—————-

How was your flight?

It was fine – the airline was pretty good. 

——————

Which hotel are you staying at?

I am staying at —- and it is quite comfortable. I am happy with it.

============

BACKGROUND.

Where are you from?

I am from city, country. It is in the south of the country. 

——————

What are your parents’ jobs?

My mother is an architect and my father is a bank manager.

——————

How is your country different from this one?

Well there are some cultural differences such as our food is quite different. We are much more respectful to old people. I like the way lessons are more fun here. 

——————–

What is school like in your country?

In some ways it is quite different. We do a lot more Mathematics. We have to remember things a lot more and not explain things so much.

———————–

Where do you go to school?

I go to Ludgrove School, it in Berkshire. 

——————-

Do you have any sisters or brothers?

No, I am an only child but I am close to my cousins.

—————-

Might any of your siblings join us here at this school one day?

Well, I do not have siblings but my cousin might come here if I do. She is asking about the school. 

======================

ADMISSIONS TESTS

Which  subjects did you do in the admissions tests?

I did Non-Verbal Reasoning, Verbal Reasoning, English and Maths.

———————-

How did they go?

English went very well. It was a fun paper. Non-Verbal Reasoning was fine too: I finished early and then went back to check my answers. Verbal Reasoning was not as easy but I got through it. Maths was a little bit hard.

———————-

You have some admissions tests coming up. How do you feel about them?

I am taking them seriously but I am not worried.

======================

EXTRA CURRICULAR ACTIVITIES

What three words best describe you?

Hardworking, polite and well-behaved.

————

Are you musical?

Yes, I play the piano. I am grade 3 right now and I want to do more grades.

———————-

Do you like acting?

No, not really. I do Drama at my current school but I am not great at it.

——————–

What sports do you like?

I like to play rugby and I like rowing. I am scrum captain. Rugby is really fun and we won most of our matches. 

—————–

Tell me about your sporting achievements?

Yes, sure. I am scrum captain of the rugby team. We beat our rival school 78-0. I scored two tries in that match. 

—————–

What are your hobbies?

I am a voracious reader. I write stories for pleasure. I like to go camping with my family. I adore swimming in the sea. I go cycling every day. 

—————-

What do you do in your free time?

I like to read fiction. I also write some stories of my own. I like to cycle. I like to swim and socialise. I go camping with my family sometimes.

—————-

Which instruments would you like to play here?

I already play the piano but I am not that good at it. I might try the violin. 

—————

What grade are you in those instruments?

I am third grade in the violin and I have been learning it for 3 years. 

————-

Would you want to join the choir?

I would like to try, yes. 

===================

THE SCHOOL

Why do you want to come to this school?

Because this school is such an old and famous school. So many famous people have been here [names]. The teachers are fantastic and the school gets outstanding exam results. The school will give me a good chance to go to an excellent university.  The ancient buildings are beautiful and the school has got a fantastic location. That means you play a lot of matches against other schools and we can go to the theatre a lot. There is a fantastic theatre here. I know you have a half Olympic size swimming pool and amazing sports facilities. You play sports here every day. There is a brilliant orchestra and choir. Some of my friends from my school came here. I met one of your teachers last year when she gave a talk at my school and she was a very nice woman. You have a huge library and a great IT room. The school is quite international and I can make friends with people from all sorts of countries. The boarding houses are really comfortable. It is a very friendly atmosphere.

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What are your favourite subjects?

 I like English and French the most. I see how the two languages help each other. 

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Which subjects do you find difficult?

I am not that good at Science. 

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What are you doing to improve in those subjects?

I take extra time over my homework. My parents have got me a tutor who comes once a week. I sometimes ask my class teacher for more guidance.

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CURRENT SCHOOL AND ATTITUDES?

Are you well behaved?

Yes, certainly. I always obey the rules.

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Have you ever been suspended or punished?

No, never. My behaviour is excellent. 

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How should pupils behave towards teachers?

Pupils should be very respectful. I am like that. I always obey teachers. Pupils must always do their homework on time and pay attention in lessons. 

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Can you recognise when you have done wrong and apologise?

Yes, sure. Sometimes I am wrong and I admit it. I say sorry. 

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How good are you about doing your homework?

I am pretty good at it. I almost always do it on time.

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Do you like your present school? Why or why not?

 Yes, it is quite good. The teachers are mostly very good. There are lots of sports to play. But I am ready to move on to a bigger school with more things to do. 

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MOVING ON TO A NEW SCHOOL

How do you feel about boarding?

I feel positive about it. It will help me mature and make really close friends. There are also more activities at boarding schools. 

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This school has a Christian ethos and you must attend chapel. How do you feel about that?

Yes, that is fine. Even though I am not  from a Christian family I do not mind attending chapel at all. I like the music and its educational.

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Do you know any pupils already in our school?

Yes, a few people who left my school last year are already there. They say it is a tremendous school.

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What do you know about this school?

It was founded in 1820 by Mr Baird. It is well known and some politicians and writers went here. It gets terrific exam results. There is a ski trip every Christmas. The school is really keen on Music. 

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Might you want to join the CCF?

Yes, I would. It seems really fun. I want to see what the army is like.

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How would you feel about being the only one of your nationality here?

I really like the fact that there are lots of nationalities here. I am a global citizen. 

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This school is very international. Do you like that?

Yes, I do. I have been to a few other countries. I really like meeting people from other countries. 

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Which other schools might you apply to?

I will apply to Harrow, Uppingham and Caterham.

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Are we your first choice?

Yes, you are my top choice!

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If you do not get in where will you go?

Probably I will go to Uppingham.

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This is a mixed school – how do you feel about that?

I like that. It is more human. It is good to socialise with boys and girls. It prepares people for adult life. 

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This is a single sex school: how do you feel about that?

It is good because there is less distraction. People are freer to be themselves and not worry about what the opposite sex thinks.

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Do you have any questions for me?

Yes, I do. Would it be possible to play rugby and football in the autumn term or do I pick just one?

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LONG TERM FUTURE.

What do you want to do after you finish school?

I want to go on to university and study maybe English or French. I really love learning and I know that I need a degree so I can get an enjoyable and well paid job. 

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What job do you want to do?

 I am not sure. It is so far away. Perhaps become a journalist but I would need to do an internship first.

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CHALLENGING QUESTIONS

Who is the best teacher you have ever had?

The best teacher I ever had was Miss Jordan. She taught us English. She was very fun and really inspiring. We all liked and respected her so there was no misbehaviour. She taught me more in one week than someone else taught me in one year. Miss Jordan had a very clear way of explaining things. 

What is Brexit?

Brexit means British exit. It is about the UK leaving the European Union. Britain voted to leave in a referendum but almost half the country is against it. It might be bad for the economy but it is too early to be sure. 

What do you think of Donald Trump?

Donald Trump is a very controversial politician. He was President of the United States and he set a bad example by being rude to people and lying a lot. Some people adore him and at least he did not start any wars. 

Should we abolish homework?

No, we need to do some independent study. Plus there is not enough time to do everything in school. Sometimes we need to memorise vocabulary lists or write up science experiments and it is better to do that at home. 

If could change one thing about your school what would it be?

My school is fabulous but we could do with a larger swimming pool. So if I had enough money I would build that. It would also be brilliant if we could learn Chinese because that is a language that is becoming increasingly important. 

Tell me an interesting fact that you learnt recently?

My teacher just told us that Charles Dickens was the most popular writer in the world in his lifetime. It is surprising because Dickens’ novels are really hard to read.

Is it right for parents to select the sex of their baby?

No, it would be wrong. People should accept  their baby no matter what the sex. Girls are just as good as boys. 

If you could invent a machine what would it be able to do?

I would invent a machine that would make me be able to bring back people from the dead. I really miss my great grandmother. I would love to be with her again.

Italy is the foreign country that I like the very most. I appreciate Italy
enormously for a multiplicity of reasons. What is not to like about it?
The Italian language uses rhythmical syllables. I feel as if I were born
knowing it. If I believed in reincarnation, I would say I was Italian in a
past life. There is nothing unmelodious about it. There musicality of
Italian is always a treat. A lot of people cannot speak English there.
That pleases me because it compels me to speak Italian.
The architecture is so often handsome. The baroque style,
neoclassical and even modern architecture. You have to try really
hard to find an unbeautiful building in Italy.
There are such culinary delights in Italy. Their dishes are so flavourful
and appetising. Italian meals are well-presented. Even the crockery
and tableware are aesthetically pleasing. An Italian meal is a
multisensory feast. Italian food has just the right melange of
crunchiness, chewiness, and softness: solidity and liquidity. Italian
food is as much a tactile as a taste experience. The rich ripe flavours
explode in my mouth and leave a sumptuous aftertaste. Pasta has
such a pleasing texture, and it is accompanied by so many
scrumptious sauces. Their cheeses and breads are so tasty and
always fresh. I like olive oil but not olives themselves – they are too
pungent for my pallet. I do not care for anchovies either. Having such
a long littoral on the Tyrrhenian Sea and the Adriatic Sea it is
unsurprising that the Italians have seafood as a major component of
their diet. I do not like fish or shellfish too much, but I consume it a
little in Italy where it is hard to avoid.
There is a reason why Italian restaurants are found all over the
world. In the United Kingdom there are sometimes five Italian
restaurants on the same high street!

The Mediterranean diet is also the healthiest in the world. No
wonder the Italians live so long. They have so much to live for!
As Italians say, a day without wine is like a day without sunshine. A
sunless day in Italy is vanishingly rare. An Italian meal should be
accompanied by quaffing red wine. Italians wines are so often of
surpassing quality. Their tanins are just right. They are tangy enough
but not too tangy. They can be fruity, meaty or earthy. Italian reds
often have legs.
People in Italy are mostly good-looking people. They tend to look
after themselves. They enjoy every morsel of their food and do not
eat too much. The Italians are usually stylish, and they pay attention
to details. Italian ladies normally accessorise very well. They are
renowned for their elegance and femininity. That is why Milan is one
of the world capitals of fashion. There are many famous Italian
designers. Italy also produces the most fashionable shoes. I often
stand at shop windows, and I admire the high heels.
Another Irish people hit the nail on the head when she said Italy is a
visual culture not a verbal culture. When Italians advertise
something, they try to make it appeal to people by being stylish.
I like a bit of Italian vanity and posing. A policewoman will wear her
hair all the way down her back. A motorbike policeman will have
designer stubble, shades on at night and thrust his thumbs into his
belt loops.
The musical tradition in Italy is also fantastic. It has produced so
many outstanding composers from Antonio Vivaldi to Verdi to
Rossini to Salieri to Puccini. So many tremendous singers and
songstresses are or were Italian. A lot of singers of other nationalities
are of Italian ancestry like Frank Sinatra, Madonna, Tony Bennet,
Lady Gaga, Natalie Imbruglia and Gabriella Cilmi. The Italians are an
exceptionally multitalented people. In terms of the arts there really is

no other nation with a relatively small population that has
contributed so much to world culture. It is so a civilised country!
The landscape of Italy is also marvellous. It has so much variety
within a relatively small geographical compass. It has soaring
snowcapped Alps, green plains, arid areas, and plenty of rolling hills.
There are countless isles off the craggy coast.
Because Italy has such a long coastline so much of life is lived on the
beach. It is like Italy is a permanent party. Imagine a sunny day on
golden sands while wafted by cooling zephyr. The waves are
powerful enough to be exciting but not so strong as to be menacing.
On your jetski!
Italy’s heritage is second to none. It is impossible to exaggerate
Rome’s influence on world history. The Roman Empire, the Latin
language and the Catholic Church were all based in that city that
they once called the head of the world. Latin is the mother of at least
half a dozen other Romance languages: French, Spanish, Portuguese,
Italian, Romanian, Catalan, Valenciano, Galician, Romansch,
Provencal, Occitan, Nicois, Dauphine and so forth.
Rome itself is peerless. The Italians say of Rome, ‘’a lifetime is not
enough.’’ It is packed with marvels. There are so many splendid
churches and historical sites.
The very word romance is derived from Rome. It is a city of the most
peerless magnificence.
People cruelly quip about an Italian tank having five reverse gears or
the shortest book in the world being the book of Italian victories. As
life in Italy is so magnificent that is why Italians do not want to get
killed in wars. Their constitution says ‘’Italy rejects war.’’
The Italians are usually very laid back. I know I must be circumspect
about generalising about a nation of sixty million people. But I like
them attitudinally. Despite their very relaxed attitude things seem to

My favourite foreign country
Italy is the foreign country that I like the very most. I appreciate Italy
enormously for a multiplicity of reasons. What is not to like about it?
The Italian language uses rhythmical syllables. I feel as if I were born
knowing it. If I believed in reincarnation, I would say I was Italian in a
past life. There is nothing unmelodious about it. There musicality of
Italian is always a treat. A lot of people cannot speak English there.
That pleases me because it compels me to speak Italian.
The architecture is so often handsome. The baroque style,
neoclassical and even modern architecture. You have to try really
hard to find an unbeautiful building in Italy.
There are such culinary delights in Italy. Their dishes are so flavourful
and appetising. Italian meals are well-presented. Even the crockery
and tableware are aesthetically pleasing. An Italian meal is a
multisensory feast. Italian food has just the right melange of
crunchiness, chewiness, and softness: solidity and liquidity. Italian
food is as much a tactile as a taste experience. The rich ripe flavours
explode in my mouth and leave a sumptuous aftertaste. Pasta has
such a pleasing texture, and it is accompanied by so many
scrumptious sauces. Their cheeses and breads are so tasty and
always fresh. I like olive oil but not olives themselves – they are too
pungent for my pallet. I do not care for anchovies either. Having such
a long littoral on the Tyrrhenian Sea and the Adriatic Sea it is
unsurprising that the Italians have seafood as a major component of
their diet. I do not like fish or shellfish too much, but I consume it a
little in Italy where it is hard to avoid.
There is a reason why Italian restaurants are found all over the
world. In the United Kingdom there are sometimes five Italian
restaurants on the same high street!

The Mediterranean diet is also the healthiest in the world. No
wonder the Italians live so long. They have so much to live for!
As Italians say, a day without wine is like a day without sunshine. A
sunless day in Italy is vanishingly rare. An Italian meal should be
accompanied by quaffing red wine. Italians wines are so often of
surpassing quality. Their tanins are just right. They are tangy enough
but not too tangy. They can be fruity, meaty or earthy. Italian reds
often have legs.
People in Italy are mostly good-looking people. They tend to look
after themselves. They enjoy every morsel of their food and do not
eat too much. The Italians are usually stylish, and they pay attention
to details. Italian ladies normally accessorise very well. They are
renowned for their elegance and femininity. That is why Milan is one
of the world capitals of fashion. There are many famous Italian
designers. Italy also produces the most fashionable shoes. I often
stand at shop windows, and I admire the high heels.
Another Irish people hit the nail on the head when she said Italy is a
visual culture not a verbal culture. When Italians advertise
something, they try to make it appeal to people by being stylish.
I like a bit of Italian vanity and posing. A policewoman will wear her
hair all the way down her back. A motorbike policeman will have
designer stubble, shades on at night and thrust his thumbs into his
belt loops.
The musical tradition in Italy is also fantastic. It has produced so
many outstanding composers from Antonio Vivaldi to Verdi to
Rossini to Salieri to Puccini. So many tremendous singers and
songstresses are or were Italian. A lot of singers of other nationalities
are of Italian ancestry like Frank Sinatra, Madonna, Tony Bennet,
Lady Gaga, Natalie Imbruglia and Gabriella Cilmi. The Italians are an
exceptionally multitalented people. In terms of the arts there really is

no other nation with a relatively small population that has
contributed so much to world culture. It is so a civilised country!
The landscape of Italy is also marvellous. It has so much variety
within a relatively small geographical compass. It has soaring
snowcapped Alps, green plains, arid areas, and plenty of rolling hills.
There are countless isles off the craggy coast.
Because Italy has such a long coastline so much of life is lived on the
beach. It is like Italy is a permanent party. Imagine a sunny day on
golden sands while wafted by cooling zephyr. The waves are
powerful enough to be exciting but not so strong as to be menacing.
On your jetski!
Italy’s heritage is second to none. It is impossible to exaggerate
Rome’s influence on world history. The Roman Empire, the Latin
language and the Catholic Church were all based in that city that
they once called the head of the world. Latin is the mother of at least
half a dozen other Romance languages: French, Spanish, Portuguese,
Italian, Romanian, Catalan, Valenciano, Galician, Romansch,
Provencal, Occitan, Nicois, Dauphine and so forth.
Rome itself is peerless. The Italians say of Rome, ‘’a lifetime is not
enough.’’ It is packed with marvels. There are so many splendid
churches and historical sites.
The very word romance is derived from Rome. It is a city of the most
peerless magnificence.
People cruelly quip about an Italian tank having five reverse gears or
the shortest book in the world being the book of Italian victories. As
life in Italy is so magnificent that is why Italians do not want to get
killed in wars. Their constitution says ‘’Italy rejects war.’’
The Italians are usually very laid back. I know I must be circumspect
about generalising about a nation of sixty million people. But I like
them attitudinally. Despite their very relaxed attitude things seem to

work. There is none of the dysfunctionality that mars less happier
lands.
Such an unstressy nation I never met. Regulations can be ignored. No
jobsworths for them.
I have met countless Italians. There are mostly very amicable and
courteous. I have worked with lots of Italians too and the majority of
them were bonhomous.
In Italy they call people boy and girl unless these people are blatantly
elderly. People are called boy and girl well into their 40s. It like the
youthful outlook that it signifies.
The highest rate of tattooing in the world is in Italy. It suggests that
they are daring and fun people.
Public transport in Italy goes everywhere. It is also very cheap.
Of course, Italy is imperfect. There is the occasional bad person.
Some towns are shabby and need a few repairs. Italy is not the most
affordable country in the world.
I must admit it. I am a raving Italophile!
Italy is derived from the Greek word italos meaning bull. But they eat
rather little beef. It is most curious I know.

work. There is none of the dysfunctionality that mars less happier
lands.
Such an unstressy nation I never met. Regulations can be ignored. No
jobsworths for them.
I have met countless Italians. There are mostly very amicable and
courteous. I have worked with lots of Italians too and the majority of
them were bonhomous.
In Italy they call people boy and girl unless these people are blatantly
elderly. People are called boy and girl well into their 40s. It like the
youthful outlook that it signifies.
The highest rate of tattooing in the world is in Italy. It suggests that
they are daring and fun people.
Public transport in Italy goes everywhere. It is also very cheap.
Of course, Italy is imperfect. There is the occasional bad person.
Some towns are shabby and need a few repairs. Italy is not the most
affordable country in the world.
I must admit it. I am a raving Italophile!
Italy is derived from the Greek word italos meaning bull. But they eat
rather little beef. It is most curious I know.

Hello. It is Ayomide Akintunde here. I have just been
enthroned as the bishop of Benin City.

I remember you from your time in church house in the 1980s.

I remember you mother was Irish. No, she was Scotch. Like
the whisky?
In Africa we are very much liking the Irishman because he is
making the black beer for the black man. Tell me David have
you ever tasted Guinness? Are you still having a problem with
the Paddies?

In Nigeria the Muslims are the bad boys. You are having a
problems with the Muslims in England.

I am coming to England, and I hope we can meet.

Do you accept the Lord as your personal saviour?
Then I embrace you as my brother in Christ Jesus.

Let’s meet for tea at the Randolph Hotel. I am on expenses I
will pay. I will pick up the tab.

David, I want you to come out to Nigeria to lead a moral
crusade against sodomy.

David how many children you have? David, you have no
children. Does not the good book so go forth be fruitful and
multiply?
How old is your wife. David you are not married. This is not
good.
I will set you up with my cousin. We are very wearied she be
left on the shelf because now she is 12 years old.
Me and my goodwife Winnifred are a fecund couple. The
almighty in his infinite wisdom has seen fit to bless us with a
brood of a baker’s dozen of children. We shall be happy to
accept as many children as the good lord shall see fit to
bestow upon us.

We have two eldest girls who are of marriageable age
Chastity and Virginity. We got the other girls Gertrude,
Patience, Dorothy, Charity, Verity and Prudence.

We got a few boys: the eldest are Israel and then there is
Englishman. We got the little ones Methusaleh, Jehoshaphat,
Shadrach, and Josiah.

I take the 5th commandment very seriously. Thou shalt not
commit adultery. A man and his wife are one flesh. I never
ever cheat on my wife or on my mistress.

As a good Christian man I have to have concubines because
King David the Prince of Divines had hundreds of concubines.
He was the psalmist.

I know you said you are a good friend of Mrs. Queen. I want
you to tell Mrs. Queen that we in Nigeria are absolutely loyal
to Her Britannic Majesty.

Next time you meet Her Gracious Majesty, please assure her
of my personal allegiance to her most exalted person. I saw
the footage of her coronation in Westminster Abbey. I saw
her take the coronation on the holy Bible to uphold the
Christian faith and to defend the protestant settlement of the
church of England.

Mrs. Queen is the lord’s anointed. We believe in the divine
right of kings.

All the paramount chiefs of Nigeria swore the oath of
allegiance to Her Majesty. They swore on the Holy Bible.
Therefore, that is binding forever. I do not believe in the

REPUBLIC of Nigeria it is a bastard state. I believe in the
Crown Colony of Nigeria.
David next time Mrs. Queen visits you at home please ask her
to send us a new governor general to Nigeria. We want a
white man and not a Pakistani. I am working for the
restoration of colonial rule in British Africa.

I am in the Anglican Church of Nigeria. We are in full
communion with the church of England. We are represented
at the Lambeth palace conference. But tell me David why you
let the poofters in? In Nigeria we allow no poofters? Why are
you allowing sodomite marriage. It is unbiblical. The bible is
the word of God. I believe in it literally every single word. I
believe in verbal inerrancy.
David you will come to Nigeria.

I want you to join my new evangelistic mission. It is called
towers of praise.
David, I know you are a good orator. I saw you debate at the
Cambridges Union.

David you will live the life of a 19 th century vicar. You will be
driver around by a chauffeur in a Bentley. You will live in an
8-bedroom vicarage, you are prince of the church. You must
be treated as befits the dignity of a man of the cloth.

The aims of the towers of praise mission are twofold;

To love and serve our lord and saviour.
The acquisition of property in Nigeria and overseas
There is a vast amount of money to be made in the service of
the lord!

When the three kings came to Baby Jesus to shown they
loved him they brought him gold. If you love Jesus then bring
me gold.
David what you are doing now in your career, are you a
bishop yet?
Oh you retired on health grounds at the age of 41 and you
want to come out to west Africa – the white man’s grave?

David my other role is witchfinder general of Nigeria. There
are an awful lot of sorcerers around these days. That is why I
go witch hunting. We smell them out. For some reason the
witches are always the socially marginalised groups. They are
demented old women or street children. They seem very
witchy to me.

 

Once upon a time in a country far, far away there lived a man named Will and a lady named Rosemary.

Will had been born in a rich but unhappy family. His parents were always shrieking, swearing and crying. There was a lot of hurling of furniture, slamming the door and storming out. His mum and dad had unlimited appetites and were never satisfied. They shopped and boasted all day so they could shop and boast again the next day about buying things that they did not need or value. Amassing these things only made them feel empty. It was all a raucous rodomontade of a screaming match with alcohol poured on top.

The parents thought they were royalty but behaved like chavs. Their family moved every single year and his whole life was thrown into complete chaos. Therefore, Will had no friends and his parents always made him the odd one out. He could not do anything right for his parents. Everything he did was wrong for them. His sisters fought like cat and dog. In the end his sisters would not even speak to each other. Will had an excellent education. The problem was that he ended up clever but unwise. He had been foolish. Will had made the wrong decision every single time. Bad choices had led to bad outcomes. He had become poor and ended up doing boring, stressful jobs he disliked. He had had girlfriends but had been naive. Some had tricked him and others he had not treated with enough respect. He felt that he was cursed by the God of mediocre girlfriends. He was foredoomed to mess up everything. His tiny flat was untidy and he wore tatty, faded, unfashionable, old clothes. He did not make much money in his job as a bicycle delivery boy. Everything that could go wrong had gone wrong. He had had a child with Miss Evil. He had taken pity on Miss Evil and moved to Povertyland to save her. He had spent every penny on her. But Miss Evil had torn his baby away from him. He had wasted the best years of his youth on someone who had so coldly and cruelly betrayed him again and again. The accursed woman had caused him an infinitude of grief. He was deeply wounded and thought he would never recover.

It seemed that he would never achieved his heart’s desire. He was well into adulthood and he feared that no one would ever love him. He was an incurable romantic. His friends told him he was being silly with his adolescent fantasy of true love. They said that life is not a fairytale. People scorned him as a cloud dweller. Will was a penniless writer and had to take another job to make ends meet. This daydreamer could never achieve anything.

Rosemary had been born into an ordinary family. They did not have much money but they were rich in love and happiness. She had younger siblings and helped to look after them. She was very responsible. Her parents were sensible and kind. She was a hardworking and clever girl in school. When she grew up she became the Professor of Braininess. She also won an Olympic Gold Medal in jogging. She was a domestic goddess and kept winning master chef. She broke the world record for tidying a house. Everyone idolised Rosemary. She was the muse of every poet and painter on the globe. She was tall, slender, elegant and blessed with matchless beauty beyond compare. The dictionary did not have enough words and perpetuity did not have enough time to extoll her. She was so beautiful because she had never smoked a cigarette, she ate healthy food and the right amount of it as well as taking ample exercise. This comely lady was witty and a fantastic conversationalist. She had a lively circle of female friends. But somehow men were afraid to approach Rosemary. She had had her share of boyfriends at school and university. But when she was a real adult she had no more. The men she met all seemed inadequate or uninterested. But Rosemary was very lucky to have the two best children in the world. She was only ever cross with them when it was absolutely necessary. She liked nothing more than nurturing. She had won the Mum of the Year Award three times. Her house rebounded to the rompings of her sturdy children.

Rosemary was as generous spirited and warm hearted as can be. She thought she was happy enough but not quite content. Perhaps she did not need a man after. She had been warned; men only ever bring trouble. The only male in her life was her cat. Rosemary was hard on herself. She criticised her body because she looked like a human being and not and photoshopped and airbrushed image in a magazine. She did not like her legs because they were real!

One day Will was sitting in an Italian restaurant. In walked God’s masterpiece. She was a leggy lady clothed in a diaphonous scarlet dress. Her long legs were toned and tanned. She was lithe, svelte and gracile. Her pale complexion was bathed in the radiance of both the sun and of the moon. Her glossy auburn tresses tapered down to her dainty delicate elbows. Her fine boned faced was framed with perfectly proportioned and fragile features. Her smile could illuminate a Black Hole. She tottered slowly in on high heels. She was Rosemary. She bit her lower lip feeling a little anxious. Around her neck she wore snow white lustrous pearls. Her roselips were but lightly made up. She was the living spirit of femininity.

Will’s eyes met Rosemary’s. He looked into those sparkling emerald eyes and saw the serenity of her smile. She inquired into his intelligent iridescent eyes. Instantly a curious connection was formed. Rosemary perceived a mysterious bond between them. She knew it was written in the stars. Will’s mouth fell agape. His head was aswim and his heart was leaping. He looked the lady up and down. She felt herself melt. Her heart was aglow! The Angel of Love had drawn back her bow and fired a flaming arrow deep into Will’s heart. Will stood up and walked slowly, oh so slowly, towards Rosemary. She gazed at him in bewildered awe. He was dumbstruck by her exquisiteness. But it was not only her unutterable, matchless and boundless beauty that had stolen his heart away. He saw her face had never told a lie. Her smile was so serene that it could calm a hurricane. He breathed deep of the heady fragrance she was wearing. But she seemed just unattainable. What would someone like her see in him?

Rosemary studied Will closely. He was tall and broad shouldered. Will was a little chubby but she did not mind that overmuch. He had warm brown hair down to his eyebrows. His rectangular face was regular but distinguished. He had a slightly broad nose and a naturally smiley face. She knew instinctively he was a man who could never, ever hurt her. To her, he was impossibly attractive.

Will stopped an inch from her. But Rosemary put out her hands and drew him towards her. Their lips met in the most soulful kiss of all time. Somehow they just knew it was meant to be. At the creation of the universe all the souls were paired up. A perfect person is created for you. Finding that perfect person is your life’s quest. But some people search to the uttermost ends of the universe never, ever find him or her. But Will knew in a split second that Rosemary was his destiny.

Rosemary and Will finally disengaged. They held hands and walked to a table. They had a little luncheon but did not manage to take their eyes or hands off each other. They wanted to devour each other. They scarcely ate a morsel. Will was awestruck by her prettiness, the brilliancy of her mind and the geniality of her character and her elan vitale. His voice was a pukka dulcet tenor’s tone. Her voice was a like a lilting violin. Rosemary had a soft and gentle personality. She was unpretentious but as gracious as a princess. When luncheon was over they exchanged but one chaste kiss and had to go their separate ways the day. But before they did, Will confessed, with a catch in the voice, ”I love you.” The words pierced Rosemary’s heart. She was momentarily dazed. A lump rose in her throat and lachrymations welled in her innocent, heavenly eyes as she heard herself whisper in her velvet voice, ”I love you.” Never a truer word had been spoken. He felt that Rosemary’s named was engraven on his heart. Will was a complete coward but knew he would gladly pour out every last drop of his life’s blood to save Rosemary.

When they next met it was not just that Rosemary wanted to be with Will. She had to be. Mother Nature herself commanded Rosemary to unite with Will. Rosemary gave herself completely to the one she loved. She was soaked to the skin in emotion. She had magically healed Will’s broken heart.

But they met again and again. They were falling truly, madly and deeply in love. They knew their love was absolute insanity but they never wanted it to end. Will warned her that he was a pauper and a loser who had nothing to offer but problems and impossible ambitions. But Rosemary loved him despite his shortcomings. He proclaimed her the very summit of absolute perfection. They communicated by a strange telepathy and could complete each other’s sentences. Will and Rosemary knew that they were born for each other. The Goddess of Love had cast a spell of romance over the couple. There has never been and never shall be a love so pure, so tender, so sweet and so sublime.

For Will it seemed that Rosemary could make all problems and worries disappear. She was the panacea for every ill. She could take all the pain away. He clung to her as though she was a life raft when he was shipwrecked on a tempest tossed ocean. Sometimes under the covers they liked to imagine that they were the only two people in the whole universe. She was ineffably elated to be with him. They were both addicted to the most potent substance in the world: love.

When Will and Rosemary and were apart each one felt like he or she was missing a limb. They spoke for hours and hours on the phone. Each one had what the other needed. Will taught her to swim. She taught him to sing. He canticled her praises every morn and every night. When the two were together the sometimes chatted all day. At other times they could look wistfully at each other and enjoy a wordless conversation. Their loves was far better than in any film and far beyond their wildest fantasies. Rosemary had never felt so wild and free. Their emotions were so extravagant that the two found it exhausting.

In the darkest depths of a stilly midnight the trueloves lay very, very close together and a miracle happened. They were engulfed by tidal wave after tidal wave of love washing over them. It felt frighteningly good! A tsunami of the most indescribable pleasure exploded inside them. They heard the strings of a symphony orchestra play a melodious euphony for them. The choir of all the angels in heaven rejoiced for their love. Will bellowed like a bull and Rosemary ululated like a nightingale. The two loved each other so, so much that a tiny baby started to grow deep inside of Rosemary’s inmost parts. As the baby grew so did the love of Rosemary for Will and the love of Will for Rosemary. Rosemary felt that she was finally blossoming with the pregnancy. With every day of the pregnancy she became younger and healthier. She was as big as a whale but had never felt so adored or beautiful in all her days. Will and Rosemary were elated to know that the baby burgeoning in her womb was the flesh and flood of both of them. The baby was jumping for joy in Rosemary’s belly. The baby was so eager to join the family that she was trying to kick her way out.

Will met Rosemary’s children. They instantly liked him because of his bottomless repertoire of jokes, stories and animal noises. Will had finally found acceptance. Rosemary had finally found someone who treasured her as she so deserved. They were soaring and twining in a deathless love. The two were enraptured in celestial bliss. Will and Rosemary could cuddle each other for all eternity. They felt narcotised with love as though they were floating on an infinite azure ocean of eternal ecstasy.

After a few months the bouncing baby was born as Will held Rosemary’s manicured hand. They named her Eva. Everyone was overjoyed about this most precious gift that had been bestowed on the family. Rosemary’s other children did not feel jealous. They knew that love is only ever multiplied and never divided.

Then Miss Evil finally saw sense because of what Rosemary said to her. Miss Evil gave Will back his son Gonjy. Gonjy came to live with Rosemary, Will and the girls. Gonjy was weclomed into the bosom of the family.

Will finally had the happy family that he had always craved. Rosemary finally had someone who loved her for who she was and was not intimidated by her amazing accomplishments nor believed that gold outweighs a heart. The limerence that Will and Rosemary felt for each other enmeshed their hearts forever. They cleaved to each other as two wax candles melt into one.

Then the family got a little beige dog called Bella. The family was flooded with an elixir of love so vast and rich and deep that it would never run out. They all lived happily ever after.

 

Marmaduke O’Connor

There is good and bad in all of us. We all know that good people sometimes do bad things and bad people sometimes do good things. This is a delicate issue that we are discussing. There is a moral dimension to it. I address this in particular to the people of the United Kingdom where I am resident. But this is an issue of the first importance to the entirely of mankind. This question hinges on what it is to be human and whether there is a right to life. Is a human embryo or human foetus a human being? If so is this human alive?

I know some good and moral people who have had unnecessary abortions. Some of these people are very loving mothers towards their other children. That is the staggering thing. There is a limitless capacity for self-delusion. People can fool themselves into thinking that up is down and that right is wrong. People have tricked themselves into believing that certain categories of people are not people at all. We are told that people In utero are not people. It is like saying that people of a certain race are not humans or women are not humans.

There are good people on the other side of the debate. A person can be right on every issue except one. There are loathsome people on my side of the debate. Sometimes one has to give the devil his due. Even evil people are right occasionally. The truth is untidy.

To call a viewpoint far left or far right is just a thought terminating cliché. That is mere name calling and mudslinging. Guilt by association is no argument. If a far left person said something true would she be wrong? If a far right person made a logical argument on one issue would he be wrong just because he is far right?

I am not a religious person and do not speak in religious terms. I approach this as a secularist and a humanist.

I am the last to moralise. I believe that people should be able to do whatsoever they please unless it harms others. This harm principle was invented by the father of utilitarianism Jeremy Bentham. It was regarded as a liberal and progressive philosophy. His disciple John Stuart Mill took it further. Mill was a Liberal MP.

There are many here who very much moralise and who strive to interfere in very tiny personal decision. There are control freaks who itch to micromanage every single interaction. There are nanny staters who want to control what we say, what we eat, what we drink, what we see, what we read, what we think and so forth. A socialist parliamentarian Wes Streeing wants to criminalise people smoking. So much for bodily autonomy! Abortion enthusiasts in him disbelieve in choie. Contrariwise, I strive not to interfere. My maxim is minimum intervention. However, there are times when one person’s action directly harms another. AT that point the state is obliged to intervene. That is what the state exists for. It is to protect those who cannot protect themselves.

My moral philosophy is that morality is helping people and immorality is hurting them. Does abortion hurt babies? Only a fool or a charlatan would say no.

This is not a party political issue. It is true that few on the Labour, Liberal Democrat or SNP benches are pro-Life. The last Labour pro-Lifer I can think of was Kerry Pollard. There were Lib Dems who were pro-life such as Tim Farron and David Alton.  But then again most on the Conservative benches are pro-abortion. Some very distinguished Tories have been pro-abortion such as Maggie Thatcher and John Bercow. He was a Tory once you know.

I am all in favour of contraception including the morning after pill. I am happy with the morning after pill preventing sperm reaching an egg or preventing an egg being released. I am more dubious about it causing a fertilized egg to come out of the lining of the womb.

An embryo’s humanity is on distinguishability and contestability spectra. When is life initiated? When all 7 signs of life are there

It could be said that there are only two statuses with regard to life. These are alive or dead. However, perhaps there is a third status and that is preliving. Or is that semantical sleight of hand?

If an embryo can be frozen for decades then the embryo is not alive. It could be called pre living. I do not know enough about the very early embryonic stages. I am not an embryologist.

I am in favour of using date from stem cell research that has already been done. Even if this is killing we cannot bring these embryos back. Good can come out of bad.

These embryos are human. We do not know their characters. Which ones will be loquacious and which ones laconic. We do not know who will be a talented sportswoman and which one is musically gifted. But they are human.

There are abortionist casuists who will argue that since switching off a life support machine is not always murder therefore willfully killing a child in the womb is never murder. This is a preposterous false comparison. Only a feminist or a knave would fall for such sleight of hand. Discontinuation of medical treatment is not murder. Medical treatment is precisely the willful interruption of natural processes for the express purpose of maintaining life. Abortion is quite different. It is a deliberate interruption of the natural process for the express purpose of killing someone against his or her will.

There are rare situations in which abortion should be permitted. If the mother’s life is in danger than she should of course be allowed to abort her baby. That was the case long before the 1967 Abortion Act. That is because 2 deaths is worse than one. Moreover, if the mother dies then the baby can almost never be saved. If a woman is raped then she should be allowed to abort her rapist’s child. If a baby has fetal abnormalities inconsistent with life outside the woman then it would be pharisaical to force the woman to give birth when the baby is going to die in pain within a few hours anyway. These are all horrific and tragic situations. No decent person would wish this horror on anyone.

This is an emotive topic. It is possible to be rational whilst also expressing our feelings. The two are by no means mutually exclusive. Feeling does not always occlude ratiocination. What could be more emotional than life and death? In fact it is right to be a little emotional. That is what makes us human. That leads to the key point: when talking about embryos and fetuses it is human being that we are talking about.

I am going to do something outrageous. I am going to tell the truth. I am going to do what few people do here. I am going to say what I really believe. This is not about me. This issue is far, far more important than I can ever be or anyone’s career or any election or any government. This is about human life itself.

I am not an absolutist. Nor indeed am I pro-life on end of life issues. If an adult is terminally ill and in agony, if he or she is of sound mind and attests that he or she wants euthanasia then this should be permitted. Assisted dying ought to be allowed by law.

Should the morning after pill be allowed? I find that difficult. If it stops a sperm reaching an egg that is fine or stopping an egg being released. I have a problem with it stopping a fertilized egg implanting or staying implanted. But then not all the 7 signs of life are there until a few days in. Perhaps I am wrong and the 72 hour pill should be prohibited.

Every one of us here was once an embryo and every one of us was once a fetus. We were as human then as we are now. We were as alive then as we are alive now. What species is an embryo in a mother’s womb? Not a kangaroo or an elephant but homo sapiens.

This issue raises some fundamental questions which are binary. Do we believe in the right to life or not? Do we value our children or not? Do children have rights or not? Are we against murder or not?  Is life better than death?

There are people whom I love who have had abortions. I love them despite recognizing that they have done a terrible thing.

There are women and indeed men who have been involved in abortions who regret what they have done. Some of them are gallant enough to say so publicly. No praise is too high for such people. No amount of shame or no amount of guilt can ever bring back an aborted baby for a single instant. However, people who have aborted a baby and speak about what a terrible mistake it was can sometimes help others to avoid that same mistake.

It is vital to face the facts. We should all tell the truth unflinchingly. In this case the truth is hideous. It is wrong and cowardly to hide behind euphemisms.

I can already hear the chorus of execration. How dare I say such a ghastly thing? How dare I speak up for those who cannot speak up for themselves? How dare I defend the defenceless? How dare I call abortion by its proper name: murder?

If you think is abortion is so wonderful would you like to have been aborted. No one wants to have been aborted. If you did then you could end your life. Babies have no such choice

I asked someone if she would have liked to have been aborted. She said she would have been a nothing. But only a nothing can be nothing, can’t it? Something cannot be nothing, can it? She was speechless. Answer came there none. There is no logic to the pro-abortion argument. She never spoke to me again.

I recall a female abortion supporter telling me that abortion should be allowed because men never have their bodies restricted. This was a worthless and false argumentation inasmuch as abortion is about what is done to a baby’s body without consent and not is done to a woman’s body with consent. But her premise was also specious. Men have what they can do with their bodies restricted all the time. What we can eat is restricted, what we can drink, where we can drink it, when we can drink it, how much of it we can drink, at what age we can drink, where we are allowed to be naked, what we are allowed to look at, who we are allowed to look at, rooms we are allowed to go into, drugs we are allowed to take, who we are allowed to tattoo us, what operations we are allowed to have, whom we are allowed to have doing the operations, what we must wear on a motorbike, seatbelts we are obliged to wear and on and on and on. Bodily autonomy is never morally or legally absolute. We must consider the impact our bodily actions have on others.

How do babies get killed? If they are taken out of the womb as a method of killing it is usually asphyxiation that kills them. They either do not yet have lungs or they are so underdeveloped that they cannot breathe outside the womb. Would it be permissible to asphyxiate you? And if not, then when is it ok to do it to a baby?

Some babies are injected with a deadly substance. So are ripped apart. Is it permissible to rip an adult limb from limb? Why do you want to do it to a baby? Having wild horses tear people apart used to be a means of execution. Abortionists are compassionate which is why they reserve this means of killing for babies. It is only used for babies that have a central nervous system. Lovely!

A male abortionist said killing a child in utero is permissible because the baby does not feel anything. That is a lie. From an early stage there is a nervous system.

Even if a killing is painless it is still wrong. No one here thinks it would be right to kill one of use here even if painlessly.

I am no paragon of virtue. I have done bad things. My opponents will reply with tu quoque. Because I am imperfect I am disentitled from speaking out on any issue. That is the specious argument that abortionists will attempt. According to this line of unreasoning no one is ever entitled to say anything on any issue because human imperfection renders us all unworthy to vocalise any opinion.

Abortionists will say that expressing one’s desire to save children is offensive. But abortionists offend pro-lifers every single day. No one say that abortionists are not entitled to say their piece. The claim that something is offensive is not an argument. Abortionists are so bereft of arguments that all they are left with is the vacuous claim that pro-life rhetoric is offensive. The more important question about an argument is: is it true? Does the argument hold water? As I shall demonstrate the pro-life position is cogent.

Left wingers speak about the vulnerable. Babies are the most vulnerable of all. Surely it behoves the left to speak up for babies.

People deny that babies in the womb because we date life from date of birth. That is because the exact date of conception is rarely known. Moreover, many babies miscarry.

An American abortion enthusiast David Pakman said that babies in a mother’s body are not human because they do not have social security numbers. He really takes the biscuit. That really is world class idiocy. So before social security numbers human being did not exist? Were we to abolish social security numbers or national insurance numbers the human race would be eliminated? This is what passes for a plausible argument in the abortionist community. Abortionists will concoct any argument no matter how manifestly preposterous because they are sp hell bent on the annihilation of the innocent.

National insurance numbers are not issued to the unborn because they are not yet counted. The NHS does not know about them for a few weeks or months. We do not know their names nor their dates of birth until after birth. Moreover, many of them die naturally in the womb.

The American presidential hopeful Peter Buttigieg said late term abortions are acceptable because ONLY a few thousand children are killed at that stage per annum in the USA. This is a specious and abhorrent argument. Mr. Buttigieg is a self-proclaimed homosexual. If ONLY  a few thousands gay men were murdered in the United States every year that would not be acceptable, would it? If the KKK lynched ONLY  a few thousand black people each year that would not be permissible, would it?

We are often told that a so called reasonable number of abortions should be allowed. Some things are never reasonable. I put it to feminists, what is a reasonable number of rapes? What is a reasonable amount of wife beating? What is a reasonable amount child sexual abuse?

Shelley the radical poet rightly used abortion as a metaphor for atrocity and oppression. But today it is no metaphor.

There are some feminists against abortion. Most feminists are eager abortionists. One could agree with feminism on every issue except this one.

You commiserate with someone who has suffered a miscarriage because it is the death of a child. So condemn her if she kills such a child in purpose.

It is crucial to recognise that embryos and fetuses are babies. So let’s call them babies. No pregnant woman ever said I am having a fetus.

An implanted embryo is alive by any definition. An embryo is a he or a she. The embryo could be a ‘’they’’ because there are sometimes twins or even triplets.

An embryo does not look like a human but an embryo is a human there can be a difference between appearance and reality

A person is a person no matter how small. Saying that is s acceptable to kill someone because he or she is small is as bad as saying that it is acceptable to kill people for being over 6 foot tall.

You will also say that you agree to the right to life. But pro-abortionists say this must be balanced with a woman’s right to choose. But if the two collide which one should prevail? Without the right to life a woman would have no right to choose because she would be dead. But without a right to choose an abortion she would still be alive. Hundreds of millions of women are alive in countries were abortion is illegal in almost all circumstances.

Would you like to have been aborted? No. If abortion is wrong when you were a baby for you how can it be right for others?

When I asked an abortionist if she should have been aborted she said she would have been a nothing. No. Someone can’t be nothing, can she? But even if we say something rather than someone – still something cannot be nothing, can it? Only nothing can be nothing, can’t it. You see how plainly illogical and risible pro abortion argumentation is. This woman was alive because she had not been aborted. Had she been aborted she would be dead. Changing a person from alive to dead is called killing. Doing so when not in self defence is murder.

If I am asked to choose between a child and someone who wants to kill that child I do not have to ask myself whose side I am on. Whose side are you on?

I often hear the fallacious argument that before legal abortion women died in illegal abortions. At most this was dozens of women. The blame for these deaths lies on the abortionists. It was the abortionists who killed the women and not the pro- lifers who were against the abortion in the first instance. Yet abortionists are so illogical and dishonest that they blame the deaths of these women on people who are against abortion! Pro lifers are pro life for mothers and for babies.

The answer to back street abortions is the vigorous prosecution of these illegal abortionists. Anyone who willfully does something illegal and is reckless as to the possibility that it will result is someone’s death, if that death follows, should be prosecuted for murder even under current law and the law as it stood in 1967.  But in abortion the baby dies even if the mother does not.

They say they want safe abortions. But the death rate is 100%. That is the whole point.

I correct myself. There are very rare instances when the baby survives and is born alive. Does that give you food for thought? Even abortionists do not usually argue for the murder of babies outside the womb. What is the moral difference between killing a baby outside the womb and killing it a few inches further away?

Morality cannot be a number, can it?

Until 24 weeks a baby can be killed in the womb for any reason at all.

But babies born survive at young and younger gestational ages. Therefore the time limit should be shifted.

If a baby is born at 22 weeks the hospital will do everything it can to save that baby and sometimes succeeds. In the same hospital doctors are killing a baby who has been 23 weeks in the womb. That again exposes the irrationality of the abortionist viewpoint.

Think of that. 23 weeks in the womb. A fully formed baby with hair on his or her head. In the ultra sound you can see the baby’s face.

Look at your baby album. The first photo is often an ultra sound picture. That was you. Not something or someone else. That was you. You were as alive then as you are alive now. You were human then as you are human now. As we speak babies like that are being slain in our name.

People cite the Roe v Wade decision. It is now overturned. Miss Roe was actually Norma McCorvey. She bitterly rued trying to kill her child. She valiantly admitted this in public and became a fervent pro Life activist. Her advocation of life surely expiates the felony that she essayed to commit.

Miss Roe’s baby was born. She is alive and in her 50s. Are you going to kill her? If not then accept that it was right that she was born. Killing her in the womb would have been worse than killing her now. She has at least lived a long time.

What if women did not have abortions? Then the mother would live and so would the baby. What is wrong with that? It is a win-win situation.

Some people say we need to balance the right to life with a woman’s right to choose. I would allow women many, many choices but not the right to kill their children when totally unnecessary.

Some so called rights are not rights at all. What about the right to own slaves that was once recognized in law? What about the right to discriminate on a racist basis? Until 1993 the UK said there was a right for a man to rape his wife?

Sometime there is nothing to balance. How can we compromise on abortion? To just kill half the baby?

Far left rent a quote Laurie Penny said that those who want to save children hate women. This is a baseless, ludicrous and foul slur. Who are these people who supposedly hate women? Half of them are women. Most of the rest are married to woman. The pro murder lobby is so bereft of arguments with any plausibility that it is compelled to resort to arguments that can be irrefragably demonstrated to be utterly meritless.

It is abortionists who are full of hate. They hate babies. That is why they kill them. Action speaks louder than words. Abortionists murder people and pro-Lifers save people.

Such chutzpah to say I killed my baby because I cared about him or her. Do you care for your friends on the same way?

What about bodily autonomy? Feminists say that

So allow us to watch porn. Allow prostitution. Allow lap dancing . Allow men to look at woman

Feminists often say men have no right to be pro-life. But they have the right to be pro-choice. This proves yet again what a pernicious, dishonest, detestable, despicable, irrational and bigoted creed feminism is.

What right do I have to control a woman’s body? None. But I do have the right to stop her killing somebody else even when that body is on the woman’s body/

As John Donne said no man is an island entire of himself. I am involved in mankind

 Ask not for whom the bell tolls it tolls for thee. If one human being is murdered then none of us are safe. They abortionists will kill more and more and more. They will kill the born as well as the unborn. Abortionism is a death cult. It is death worship. They consider the murder of a child to be a sacrament. It is human sacrifice.

First they came for the embryos, then they came for the fetuses, then they came for the newborns, then they came for the yearlings.

A pro abortion philosopher from Australia has been frank enough to go further and say what abortionist really think. He is Professor Peter Singer.  He says the right to kill a child should not stop at birth. He says it is a parent’s entitlement to kill children after birth. Singer is a professor of, wait for it, bioethics. His open advocacy of mass murder of born children has not resulted in a ticking off. But woe betide any academician who speaks up for Life. That could get someone dismissed. It is staggering that Singer speaks with pathos of his relatives who were murdered in the Holocaust and then calls for another genocide.

We often hear that there is a woman’s right to choose. Choose what? She is not entitled to choose the death of her baby when this is not strictly necessary to prevent greater suffering.

When a pregnant woman walks into an abortion clinic that means 2 people are entering it. But only one comes out alive. The other person comes out in the bin.

People say pro-life demos intimidate and harass as a reason to ban them. Intimidation and harassment are illegal anyway. This false argument is an attempt to deprive us of liberty.

Some pro-lifers broke the law.

We only have Magna Carta because people broke the laws. We only have Parliament, the end of divine right, the Great Reform Act, the abolition of slavery, women’s rights. Gay rights, racial equality… because people broke the law.

Most abortionists say it was right to break the law before 1967. Many say it is right to break the law even now when providing abortions.

Pro-life groups in Italy took the corpses of these murdered babies and gave them a decent burial. They did not know the babies names. They had not been named. Abortionists deny these babies their humanity in death as they do in life. So the pro-life people buried these poor children under gravestones with the mother’s name. If the baby was a girl then the mother might have named the child after herself.

Abortion is murder. No amount of obfuscation, rationalization, normalization or justification can change this. Abortion is the lesser of two evils in some just as killing adults is generally murder but there are exceptions when it is acceptable.

I condemn the murder of abortion doctors. They should be named and shamed. They are serial killers. They are paid 150 K a year to murder children. The NHS does good work when it is not murdering kids or mutilating their genitals.

Some pro-abortion people took the gravest possible exception to pro \-life people showing some compassion towards these murder children. Why should abortionists care that someone showed decency towards the body of a murder baby? Abortionists do not recognise these children as people at all. If they consider these babies mere rubbish why do they care>?

Abortionists would have us believe that a baby is just life a toenail to be  cut off and thrown away or hair. That a baby is inert organic material and there is no moral aspect to killing the child.

It smacks of a guilty conscience that abortionists dislike the honour shown to these cadavers.

As an Irishman until recently my heart nearly burst with pride that Ireland was as so often the moral tutor of the western world. We kept the light of civilization burning. Ireland almost alone in Europe valued the lives of its children. In the republic of Ireland and in Northern Ireland our babies had the right to life that

Babies in other countries did not.

I often hear the argument that abortion should be allowed because child benefit is too low. The answer then would be to increase child benefit. I am known to want benefits to be kept down. But I offer a deal to any abortionists here. I will vote to double child benefit if you vote with me to outlaw abortion in almost all cases. Will anyone take me up on that?

Abortion was broadly outlawed in the offences against the person Act  1861. There were almost no benefits then. Yet we had almost no abortions after that until 1967. By the time abortion as generally legalized we had extensive benefits. The more benefits we have granted the more abortions we have had. The notion that we have abortions because benefits are too few and too low is manifestly bogus.

If people kill their children because they do not want to spend money on their children is this an acceptable motive? How much money would you have to be paid to kill your best friend? If you would not kill a friend for money then why is it ok to kill your child for money?

In 1965 the UK abolished the death penalty. THAT WAS and advance for human rights. In 1967 the UK reintroduced the death penalty but only for children.

I do not want capital punishment back. But why do so many speak with such pathos about people we are certain are murderers being killed but then spare no sympathy for innocent babies? I do not want anyone to be executed including those convicted of murder.

I often hear the feeble argument that the majority are pro-abortion so it must be right. This is simply following the crowd. We are not lemmings. We have agency. The majority is sometimes wrong.

The majority of people in this country were once racist. The majority were once against gender equality. The majority were once against gay rights. The majority were against gay marriage 20 years ago.

For being pro-life we are called extreme. Every advance in human rights is at first called extreme.

People tell themselves that killing babies is not killing because all it takes is a pill. Killing by chemical means s still killing. Killing someone by poisoning a person’s food is still murder. If you are charged with murder it is no defense to say I did it chemically. Killing people with poison gas s still murder. In the USA people are sometimes executed with a lethal injection. In the UK babies are killed with a lethal injection

The same poisons that kill babies would kill adults in sufficient doses.

Many abortions under the 1967 are legally dubious as well as morally repugnant. All it takes is 2 doctors to sign that continuing a pregnancy is more of a risk to the mother’s life than an abortion. Note it is not her life that has to be at risk only her health. So if she says she is a tiny bit sad or stressed her baby gets killed.

I read a journalist write on the front page of the independent in 2022 about having an abortion. She glibly said abortion was vital. It is staggering that a journalist should know so little of etymology. Vital means necessary for life. This was not vital it was mortal. She killed her baby.

We are told that abortion is healthcare. That is like saying a lethal injection execution is healthcare. It is like saying that decapitation is healthcare: after all it is only an amputation. It is like saying shooting someone is providing ventilation.

As Orwell said euphemisms can make murder seem respectable. We hear of terminations. Yes, terminating the life of an innocent child. In plain English that is murder.

Pregnancy is not a disease to be cured. Abortion is almost never healthcare. This is yet another false argument put forward by abortionists in a dishonest attempt to excuse the atrocities they are committing. It is like calling a gas chamber de lousing.

Medical care is about maintaining a heartbeat and not stopping it. Medical care is about maintain respiration and not stopping it. Abortion is the absolute opposite of healthcare.

We often hear that pro-abortion people are all about choice. What choice does a baby get? Who is most impacted by the abortion? It is the baby.

If pro- abortion people believe in choice then they must support choice for pro Life people to choose to protest. And their right to choose where to protest. That includes protesting outside abortion clinics. If you want bodily autonomy let me control my body by standing outside a murder clinic to try to save children.

They say there is a time and a place for a conversation. The clinic is that time and place. It is the last chance to save an infant.

This is the last chance to save a baby’s life. Of course we have the right to protest in the relevant place. If you want to protest against the police you protest outside a police station. If you want to protest against a court decision you protest outside the court. If you want to protest about Parliament then you protest outside parliament.

Some people find pro-life protests upsetting so abortionists want to restrict these protests to make saving the lives of babies impossible. Abortionists find the murder of children upsetting but abortionists do not want to change the law to please those who would save children.

Pro- life protestors are an emergency service. They should be publicly funded. They deserve to be loaded with honours and medals.

If you are pro-choice are you pro-choice on kidnapping? Are you pro-choice on slavery? Are you pro -hoice on rape? Are you pro-choice on paedophilia. No you are not. What about the victim? Because the victim gets no choice.

You may dislike the comparison to paedophilia. But abortion is far worse. Paedophile abuse does not usually involve murder.

There is a very powerful and well-funded abortion industry. The abortion industry consists of some doctors, nurses, some of the pharmaceutical industry, some MPs, journalists and lobbyists and so on.

We are told there are NHS shortages. If no doctors and nurses were busy killing kids then these shortages would be reduced.

Abortion is my business because it is my tax money that pays for it. But even if it were all private I have a right to advocate for life and to save people from murder. It is infanticide.

We condemned India and China in former times for female infanticide. Abortion often is that. Feminism has boomeranged. This is the ultimate gender discrimination

The abortion industry makes its money from killing babies or advocating for the same. They also get kudos. We are told that those who publicly proclaim that they have killed their children are brave. What bravery does it take to kill the defenceless. Do these babies fight back?

Abortionists say that abortion is acceptable because 1 in 3 women has done it. This makes no sense. If only 1 in 4 had done it would it be less acceptable? If every man committed rape would it be permissible because 1 in 3 men had done it? This is yet another formal logical fallacy. An action is innately moral or immoral. Its morality or immorality is not contingent on its commonality.  I do not care if 4 out of 4 women have aborted their children. It would be just as evil. Morality is not normative.

I do not propose to prosecute those who have had unnecessary abortions already. Non retroactivity is a core principle of justice. Moreover, nulla crimen nulla poena sine lege.

Abortionists say we must end the culture of guilt and shame. I agree there must be no guilt or shame about being pro-Life.

A baby’s life matters more than an adult’s feelings, doesn’t it? If guilt and shame will save a single baby’s life then causing guilt and shame among abortionists is well worth it, isn’t it? We need far more guilt and far more shame.

Nothing is guiltier than the willful murder of one’s own child? Nothing is more shameful than the ritual slaughter of a helpless infant.

Men are just as guilty of abortion as women. Men expedite it and fund it. They encourage it counsel it and sometimes pressurize women into it.

I heard a specious argument that a baby that has only been in the womb a few weeks and is incapable of surviving outside the womb has no right to life. But leave that baby inside the womb and the baby will very probably survive. A vulnerable person has as much right to life as a not vulnerable person. We should try all the harder to keep the vulnerable safe.

The police, schools and universities have largely been taken over by abortionists. Telling the plain truth is banned in schools, hospitals, the police and so on

The police far from stopping these murders facilitate them. They stand guard to help people kill kids. They prevent peaceful protests.

The police take no action against terrorist organisations such as the BPS. MSI ought to be called murder services international. They are terrorists since their violence is unlawful and in furtherance of an ideological cause: feminism.

These terrorist organization breach the international chemical weapons convention. They produce, procure, import and use weapons for the express purpose of murdering civilians.

I remind you that propaganda for an illegal war is also a crime against humanity.

It is said the law is not fit for purpose. Abortionists have said we have an outdated law because it from the 19^th century. They reveal their own ignorance and imbecility. Prior to 1861 there were no laws against abortion before the baby quickened. Moreover, a law is neither good nor bad because it is hoary. Magna Carta is not bad because it is from 1215. The Brexit Act is not necessarily desirable because it is modern. These arguments are feeble and mindless.

But abortionists are right. The law urgently needs amendment. Any mother who kills her child in her womb without lawful excuse and anyone who is guilty of accessoryship, abetment or cajoling her or expediting this crime in any wise must be awarded a mandatory sentence of reclusio perpetua. With 220 000 murders each year we have to take draconian action.

There are about 1 000 murders of born people a year in the UK. Over 99% of homicides in the UK are against babies.

Pro-lifers are not violent. It is abortionists who are violent. They murder babies every single day.

Abortionists make the flagrantly false claim that the pro-life movement is a war on women. Saving children is not killing women. That is like saying that saving men killing children?

It is abortionists who are waging a bloody war.

Abortion is the cruelest and most violent form of child abuse.

Pro -abortion people often oppose choice for others. So called pro-choice people are not pro-choice. They are anti-choice. They are pro-abortion.

Pro-lifers are pro-choice in the real sense. A pregnant would should have the choice to keep her baby or give her baby up for adoption.

People say a woman has an abortion because she cannot afford to bring up the baby. She does not have to spend a single penny on her baby. She can give her baby away at birth.

Some women say they abort their babies because they are not able to bring the baby up. Even if that is true that is not excusatory of abortion. The woman can give up her baby for adoption

Jameela Jamil tried to say murdering her own child was permissible because we do not spend enough on care homes. If this multi millionairess actually cares about children in care why has she not donated a penny to them? But no matter how much we spend on children in orphanages abortionists will still want to kill children.

People say we have to abort children because child benefit is not high enough. I offer a deal to any abortionist. I would vote to double child benefit and pay for it by a tax on billionaires in return for you voting to outlaw abortion. No one will take me up on that. It proves yet again that all these economic arguments for abortion are red herrings.

I have heard abortion advocates say that if pro Lifers object to children being killed than they should adopt these children. Some pro Lifers do that! They can only adopt these children if they are not killed. No I am not going to adopt a child. If I did how would I know that I had saved the child’s life? His or her mother might never have considered slaying the child. I am not under an obligation to adopt anyone. But parent are under an obligation to refrain from the murder of their children.

Religious organisation that oppose abortion often raised orphans. It is true that a tiny minority of priest and monks committed abhorrent crimes against children. That is ghastly. But it is not as had at killing children. Would you prefer that they had murdered children?

Some say that being brought up in a children’s home is terrible so abortion to better. Are you going to kill all the children in children’s homes? No? Then that mean you do not believe that being in a children’s home is worse than death.

We are often told that pro- life people are extreme. It is not extreme to oppose murder is it? It is not extreme to save a baby’s life is it?

It is the abortionist who are swivel eyed foam flecked fanatics. They are rabid serial killers hell bent on killing as many kids as possible. They are drunk on fantasies of blood and gold.

One MP boasted that she killed her child and says she feels not a twinge of guilt. She is proud of it. She glories in slaughter. She has been praised to the echo by feminists. As though the murder of a baby is a triumph.

There is a killer in the house and she is on the Labour benches. She is called Jess Philips. She may yet strike again. No one is safe; she is a danger to the public. Her other children are in danger. She is the Myra Hindley of politics. But Myra hindley did not kill her own kids. Myra Hindley did not urge other women to do what she had done. AT the end of her life she was remorseful.

This woman has turned her uterus into a crime scene. As Ben Jonson wrote in Fine Lady Would be: write then on thy womb of the not born yet buried here’s the tomb.

There is Stella Creasy. She is an outspoken supporter of murdering as many children as possible up to the moment of birth.

Once I saw a book for sale in Chiswick. It was titled: There’s a house inside my mummy. But for abortionists it should be called there’s a slaughterhouse inside my mummy.

People say what are you going to do make women give birth to babies they do not want? Yes. We do that anyway we will just do it a bit more.

A woman who is pregnant in a difficult situation deserves empathy. But so does her baby. The mother’s difficult situation does not entitle her to kill her child.

I hear people demand child protection and in the next breath say that the murder of children is a woman’s right.  Abortion is the cruelest and most violent form of child abuse.

Abortion is the core demand of feminism. Feminism is a creed without parallel in the world. It is quite beyond the pale of human tolerance. Feminism is the most evil ideology ever to have defaced the plant.

Facing our foe we must state out attitude plainly. In feminism we see a thing of the most infernal evil. There can be no parley with such a barbaric force any more than there could be surrender to Satan himself.

Feminism is violent extremism. There is nothing more extreme than the mass murder of children is there? Is the murder of a baby is not evil then nothing is evil.  Feminism is driven by insensate bloodlust. It is pitiless barbarism.

Feminism has declared implacable war on children. This is war outside the Geneva Convention and outside the Hague Convention. It is a war without mercy. There is no quarter. None shall be spared!

60 million children are murdered by feminists every single year. Those are just the victims we know about. And they are still not satisfied. Is there no end to their bloodlust? They want to extend their mass slaughter to more countries that currently protect babies.

Abortionists want to extend their killing fields to the non-white world. They want to impose their culture of death on more Africa, on Latin American countries and on more Asian countries.

In the USA it is mostly white doctors killing non-white babies. See anything wrong in that?

There is strength in numbers. Were it not for abortion there would be far more black people in the USA and Hispanic people. They would therefore have more political power and they could achieve racial justice.

Abortion has been enacted by all totalitarians from Stalinists to Nazis. Nazis only allowed it against certain ethnic groups because they correctly recognized it as genocide.

Feminism has murdered more people every year than any tyrant ever. They have murdered more people last year alone that Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot and Genghis Khan combined.

Elective has absolutely no place in any civilized society. There must be zero tolerance for this. It is dispiriting that the pro child abuse lobby is so rich and powerful.

Feminism will drown us all in an ocean of blood.

We have a fertility rate of 1.3. It is going lower and lower.  If it does any lower the human race is going to die out.

You may think I am an immoral person. Let’s have it your way. Let us for the sake of argument assume that I am the most immoral person in the world. That does not justify the murder of a single child, does it? Is my immorality a baby’s fault?

What would happen if I got my way? Tens of millions of lives would be saved every single year. What is wrong with that?

One day we shall shrink in horror as we look back at the barbarities of the current era. The world will thank gallant pro Lifers fro stopping genocide.

You may say I am a dreamer. But I am not the only one.

I must adapt some words from Shakespeare’s merchant of Venice.

Has a fetus not eyes? Does a fetus not move? Does a fetus not bleed? They certainly bleed.

Let us stop the bloody slaughter.

In 1980 Rishi Sunak was born in Southampton, United Kingdom. The city had a tiny Indian community. Rishi’s father was a doctor and his mother was a pharmacist. He is one of three children. Mr. Sunak’s parents were born in East Africa to Indian parents. Sunak’s grandparents emigrated from British India. One of his grandparents was born in what is now Pakistan.

The Sunak family profess the Hindu faith. Sunak wears a cast wrist band. He also abstains from alcohol.

Rishi sat the scholarship exam for Winchester College. He was unsuccessful. He was admitted to the school as a commoner – as in his parents had to pay fees. He did very well and ended up as head boy of he school. In his school holidays he worked as a waiter.

AFter school, Rishi went to Oxford University to read Philosophy, Politics and Economics (PPE). Oxford University is divided into 39 colleges. Rishi went to Lincoln College.

At university Rishi eschewed politics. He put his nose in his books and was awarded a double first class degree. Then he began his career with Goldman Sachs.

After a couple of years he went to Stanford University in the United States to study for a Master’s of Business Administration (MBA). He was awarded this degree. In California he met Akshata Murthy who is the daughter of one of the richest men in India. Mr. Murthy founded Info Sys (Information Systems) which is a computer company.

Akshata and Rishi began a relationship. They got engaged. They then had a lavish wedding. The couple were blessed with a brace of daughters.

Sunak and his bride moved back to the United Kingdom. They retained their green cards. His wife chose not to become a British citizen. She retained her Indian tax residency. She is non domiciled in the UK for tax purposes.

By the age of 30 Rishi was a self made multi millionaire. He retired from banking. He had been a Conservative since his school days when that was very unfashionable particularly for someone of an Asian background.

Rishi got onto the Conservatives’ candidates list. He was selected for the safe Conservative constituency of Richmond in Yorkshire. The incumbent William Hague was a former leader of the party and he was Foreign and Commonwealth Secretary. Hague had announced his intention to stand down from the House of Commons at the 2015 election.

In 2015 Sunak was elected MP for Richmond (Yorkshire). He had bought a house in the constituency to show commitment to the area. His wife and children spent most of their time in London.

In 2016 Sunak campaigned for a Leave vote in the Brexit referendum. This was against the grain for a banker.

Sunak rose fast in the Conservative Government. He was made Chancellor of the Exchequer in 2019. In 2020 he had to shepherd the UK’s economy through coronavirus. Businesses could apply for a GBP 45 000 loan no questions asked. Some enterprising fraudsters created bogus businesses and registered them online with Companies House. They then applied for a GB 45 000 loan. The Treasury was so overwhelmed by the number of claims. They waved them through without checking them. It did not notice that some of the so called businesses had been founded the day that the claim was made!

In July 2022 Rishi resigned from the cabinet because Boris Johnson had lied over the Chris Pincher affair. In what must have been an orchestrated move a dozen other cabinet ministers tendered their resignations. Boris Johnson was brought down in 24 hours.

In August 2022 there was a leadership contest. Eight people were nominated. Jeremy Hunt was soon eliminated. Nadhim Zahawi the then Chancellor of the Exchequer was knocked out. Rishi Sunak led from the first among the Members of Parliament (MPs). Some other MPs who were in the contest were knocked out in rounds of voting among Conservative MPs: Suella Braverman and then Kemi Badenoch.

To everyone’s surprise Liz Truss was in the final two. Most thought it would be Penny Mordaunt.

The final two were Rishi and Liz Truss. They went around the UK addressing Conservative Associations. The membership voted for Liz. The result was announced that 47% of party members voted for her. 41% voted for Rishi. The rest did not vote.

Liz Truss became Prime Minister on 6 September. On 8 September the Queen died.

Truss did not have Sunak in her cabinet. He remained on the backbenches.

Truss wrought enormous economic damage in record time. Her won party was aghast. Eventually her party turned against her. She was forced out.

Liz Truss resigned as PM on October 25. Rishi was summoned to Buckingham Palace to be appointed Prime Minister.

Rishi continued with most of Truss’ cabinet. However, he reappointed Suella Braverman as Home Secretary only 5 days after she had resigned over the misuse of a private email on official business.

Sunak’s appointment was greeted with general relief. His primary has has been to restore the economy ‘s health. The Pound Sterling rgeaine value under him. Inflation has still been bad but has fallen.

James Chichester-Clark

This year marks the 20th anniversary of the death of Sir James
Chichester-Clark. James was Prime Minister of Northern Ireland
from 1969 to 1971 and was assumed by many to be the last PM of
anywhere that Eton would ever produce.

Chichester-Clark was respectable, stolid, unimaginative, and
saturnine. He spoke in a cut glass accent and was the last Ulster
Unionist to do so.

James was born in at his family seat Moyola Park, Northern Ireland in

1. James’s father was a Unionist MP. When the father died
   James’ grandmother became a Unionist MP in Stormont for the same
   constituency and indeed the only woman there. The family was
   Church of Ireland. His ancestors had shifted from Great Britain to
   Ireland in the 17 th century. He was a distant cousin of his immediate
   predecessor as PM: Terence O’Neill.
   James attended Eton where he was an unremarkable schoolboy.
   During the Second World War he was commissioned into the Irish
   Guards. This was also the regiment of O’Neill.
   During the war James fought in Italy where he was badly wounded.
   Most of his men were killed. He bore the scars of war for the rest of
   his life
   =================================================================================================
   After the war he was appointed aide-de-campe to the Governor
   General of Canada. The Governor-General was Earl Alexander of
   Tunis who was also an Ulsterman. James was present in Canada at
   the Commonwealth meeting in 1948 when Lord Alexander allegedly
   snubbed the Southern Irish Premier John A. Murphy which led to the
   South of Ireland proclaiming a republic.
   In 1959 James wed a young widow. He and his goodwife went on to
   have two children. In 1960 James was elected to Stormont for his

grandmother’s former seat. He joined the Orange Order which was
almost sine qua non for Unionist MPs.
James’ younger brother Robin was elected to Westminster as
Unionist MP.

James served as Chief Whip of the Ulster Unionist Party (UUP). He
was later Agriculture Minister. James was a mediocre public speaker.
O’Neill was reforming Northern Ireland as nationalists were
protesting. The UUP was very chary about both of these things.
James resigned from the cabinet over the timing of O’Neill’s decision
to grant the vote to all adults and not just all householders.
Disquiet in UUP ranks and rising violence compelled O’Neill to stand
down as PM in 1969. James and Brian Faulkner put their names
forward for the leadership. O’Neill disliked both men but felt that
Faulkner was slipperier. Therefore, he let it be known that he backed
James. Faulkner later said he lost because he was middle class and
James was upper class. It was an epoch when most right wingers felt
an instinctive deference to the upper orders.

James took over a situation that would have taxed the wisdom of
even the ablest statesman. Terrorism was increasing. Nationalists
demanded instant and far-reaching reforms. Loyalists dug their heels
in. London was demanding change and not delivering sufficient
security support.

The army came into the streets in 1969 because the Royal Ulster
Constabulary (RUC) could not cope. The Hunt Report demanded
reform of the RUC B Specials. James consented but this irked the
UUP which was already troubled by what their perceived as a
weakening of the unionist position. They began to say that James
was not staunch. James orated for moderation and policies that were
more inclusive of the Catholic minority. However, the UUP was
increasingly defensive minded and sectarian asperities were

exacerbated by rising violence. James denounced bestial sectarian
attacks but they were on the increase anyway.
A tub-thumping Christian fundamentalist preacher Ian Paisley
founded his own party in 1970: the Democratic Unionist Party.
Reverend Paisley was elected to Stormont. He furiously denounced
James as a sell-out.

London sent over cabinet ministers to superintend the situation. The
UK Government ordered a large-scale search of homes in a working
class Catholic area of Belfast: the Falls Road. This led to a breakdown
in relations between the army and the local community.
In 1971 three off duty teenaged soldiers were lured to a ‘party’ and
shot dead by the IRA. The murder of unarmed men shocked the UK.
James warned Westminster that it had to increase troop numbers.
When the UK Prime Minister would not send sufficient soldiers
James resigned. Despite pleas for him to withdraw his letter of
resignation to the Governor of Northern Ireland, James refused. He
was succeeded by his rival Brian Faulkner.

James was raised to the peerage as Lord Moyola. He took his title from the name of his family seat. Though he became
deputy lord lieutenant of his native County Londonderry he kept a
low profile. He endorsed the Good Friday Agreement.
It was not until 2000 that a biography of James was published.

It was often said that after Douglas-Home there were no OE Prime
Ministers until 2010. But this overlooks two PMs of Northern Ireland.
The top politician in Northern Ireland was titled ‘Prime Minister’ from
1922 to 1972.

Terence O’Neill was handsome, lissome, debonair, always immaculate
and every inch a Guards officer. He was also shallow, vain,
unintellectual, conformist and ultimately unsuccessful.

O’Neill was born at London in 1914. The house that he was born in still stands in Kensington. He was well got as both sides of his
family were upper class with political connections. He was baptized into
Anglicanism. His father was an Irish Conservative MP and also an OE.
Terence’s mother was Anglo-Welsh. Terence was the youngest child in
the family. Just weeks later Terence’s father was killed in action: the
first MP killed in the war. Terence’s middle name was Marne because
his father had been serving at that battle when Terence was born.
Terence spent regular holidays at the family seat in Tyrone. He saw no
contradiction between being British and Irish. It was only much later
that he described himself as Northern Irish or Ulster. The O’Neill’s had
moved from England to Ireland in the 17 th century. Their surname was
originally Chichester but they had assumed the surname of the local
Gaelic chieftain.

In 1922 the IRA turned up at the O’Neill’s house in the middle of the
night and ordered everyone out. The IRA burnt it down. Terence’s
mother told him not to harbor any rancour towards Catholics because
of this. This was a time of internecine sectarian conflict.
Terence went to prep school in Winchester. He was a sound sportsman
but not scholarly. Then he went on to Eton where his career was

undistinguished. Like half of all Etonians in the 1930s he did not go to
university. Instead Terence worked in the City and briefly in Australia.
When the Second World War erupted O’Neill volunteered. He was
commissioned into the Irish Guards. He served with the army in France
and both his elder brothers were killed in the war. During the war he
met and married an Englishwoman. They connubial bliss was blessed
with a brace of children. O’Neill’s military career was as mediocre as
the rest of his life. In 1946 he was demobilized.
Back on civvy street, Terence got into politics. He had contacts par
excellence in the Ulster Unionist Party (UUP). The UUP was then an
adjunct of the Conservative Party. It was de rigueur for an aspiring UUP
candidate to join the Orange Order. This Terence did. The UUP were
traditionalists in every way and their working class voters were very
deferential. It was an epoch when in right wing circles the patrician
bray commanded instant authority.
In the decades after the war Terence was known as Captain O’Neill:
that being his highest army rank. It was uncommon to use a military
rank in civilian life unless one had risen to major at least.
Terence was soon elected to the Parliament of Northern Ireland
(Stormont) for an Antrim seat of Bannside. It abutted his late father’s
constituency. Terence was a whip. Had either of his more gifted
brothers survived one of them might have gone into politics instead.
Ere long the PM Lord Brookeborough (a Wykehamist) promoted
Terence to be Home Minister and later Finance Minister.
In 1963 Viscount Brookeborough stood down as PM. O’Neill was
shoehorned into office. The UUP was very dominant and had seen off a
spirited challenge by Northern Ireland Labour.

Pork belly politics was prominent in Northern Ireland. In a region with
high unemployment the state had many jobs in its gift. The UUP tended
to give them to Protestants who were more likely to vote UUP than
Catholics were.
O’Neill embarked on a sunshine policy towards the Republic of Ireland.
He invited his southern analogue to Belfast. Sean Lemass was a former
IRA gunman but there was good chemistry between the two premiers.
The Labour Government at Westminster pressed Stormont to reform.
Harold Wilson reminded O’Neill that a third of Northern Ireland’s
budget came from Whitehall and would be docked if Stormont did not
make life more amenable for Catholics.
O’Neill believed that he could convince a significant number of
Catholics to vote UUP. Some of his parliamentary colleagues thought he
was in cloud cuckoo land because he had not actually grown up in the
province. He visited a Catholic school which no PM had done before.
Ulster at a crossroads is O’Neill’s most celebrated allocution. His vision
of harmonious communal relations has since been realized.
Some of O’Neill’s rhetoric was far-fetched. He wanted Northern Ireland
to be ‘’the most modern part of Britain.’’ He reflected on the relative
pauperism of the Catholic community. However, it did not occur to him
that this was partially consequent on UUP policies.
Hardliners were alarmed by O’Neill’s reformism. A terrorist group called
the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) was founded in 1966. It murdered
innocent Catholics. It did not have lineage to the UVF of the 1913
foundation.
Civil rights demonstrators clashed with the RUC (i.e. police). Some
loyalists attacked civil rights protestors. Northern Ireland had been very
peaceful but the rising tide of violence was more than the RUC could

handle. Stalwarts of the UUP attribute this to O’Neill’s
wrongheadedness and to the IRA. They minimised the menace of
loyalism terrorism.
O’Neill was willing to reform the RUC. The B Specials were part-time
RUC officers and they had lost the trust of the Catholic population.
O’Neill was willing to have council houses allocated on the basis of
need and not political affiliation. He was prepared to have constituency
boundaries redrawn to remove any advantage for his party. Some of his
colleagues considered his liberalism to be dangerously naïve.
Ian Paisley founded the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP). Reverend
Paisley also ran his own fundamentalist church. The 6’5’’ firebrand
denounced O’Neill as a Lundy. Paisley tapped into some working class
resentment against a toff who seemed more English than Ulster. Paisley
coined a slogan ‘’O’Neill must go.’’
The pace of reforms was too slow to satiate nationalist but too rapid to
mollify loyalists. As Abbe Sieyes said the most perilous moment is when
a previously hermetic system seeks to reform itself.
The UVF’s bombing in 1969 was misattributed to the IRA. Half of
O’Neill’s cabinet was against him. Terence bowed to the inevitable and
tendered his resignation. He wrote that he was ‘’blown from office.’’ He
was succeeded by his distant cousin and fellow OE Sir James
Chichester-Clark.
In 1970 Terence suffered the ultimate ignominy. He lost his seat to
Paisley. The DUP has retained it ever since.
Terence retired to Hampshire. He was ennobled as Lord O’Neill of the
Maine. Maine being the river by his old seat.
Terence wrote a very episodic and jejune autobiography. He lived in
obscurity and was unwelcome in unionist circles. They scorned him as

being responsible for the Trouble owing to what they perceived as his
invertebracy.
Notwithstanding his inability to make his plans come to fruition, there
is a posthumous achievement for Terence. Northern Ireland is a much
more inclusive society partly as a result of the reformist path that he
set out for the province. The attitudinal obduracy in the 1960s made
the necessary reforms almost impossible. O’Neill lacked the nous and
the hinterland to make it happen.

The A6 murder – was the killer Alphon or Hanratty or someone else?

INTRODUCTION

The A6 murder convulsed Britain. It was an August evening in 1961 when That Tuesday Valerie Storie and Michael Gregsten sat in their Morris Minor car on a date. The car was parked in a field near Maidenhead. They were kidnapped at gun point, told to drive around for hours before their kidnapper shot Gregsten dead and then raped Valerie Storie before shooting her too. It was a time of low crime and gun crime was all but unheard of. Newspaper headlines bayed for blood. Someone must pay for this!

Eight months later an illiterate 25 year old petty thief with psychiatric problems was sent hurtling through the trap door of the gallows. His name was James Hanratty. He had paid for the A6 murder. But was he guilty?

Michael Gregsten was married with two children. His marriage broke down so he and his wife lived separately. Gregsten was a scientist and the 35 year old began an affair with a 22 year old colleague named Valerie Storie.

THE KIDNAPPING

On 22 August 1963 the two met in a pub in Buckinghamshire. Another person present in the pub was Peter Louis Alphon. Alphon was a 31 year old career criminal.

Gregsten and Storie later got into his Morris Minor car. They drove to a fairly isolated field. It was near Maidenhead: 20 miles to the west of London. There was no lighting around the area. There were no houses for a few hundred metres. There was a reason why this courting couple wanted privacy. They got into the back of the car and spent some time there. Then they moved and sat in the front. They spent 30-45 minutes in the vehicle.

A knock on the window alerted them to the presence of a white man who was roughly 5’6’’ (168 cm) tall. He wore a bandana over the lower part of his face and brandished a revolver. He told them he was a ”desperate man” and demanded that he let them into the car.

Valerie told her lover to drive off. He decided not to. It was to cost him his life.

The man got into the rear seat.  This young man was dressed in a smart suit. He told them to drive off. They went on a wild goose chase around London and the Home Counties. The kidnapper seemed to have no idea where he wanted to go. He often changed his mind. He spoke almost incessantly. The gunman had been on the run for four months. He told the couple to call him Jim so they did. They did not turn around to see his face.

Twice the car stopped and the gunman ordered Gregsten out to buy cigarettes on one occasion and to fill up with petrol on the other. Gregsten could have made a run for it. There were people around. Why didn’t he raise the alarm? His lover was still in the car and presumably Gregsten feared that if he did anything like that then the gunman would kill Valerie.

The couple spent six terrifying hours in the company of the gunman. He spoke in a Cockney accent – the accent of working class Londoners. On a number of occasions he said ”be quiet, will you, I am thinking.” He pronounced the ‘th’ like and ‘f’ which is a feature of the Cockney accent. Therefore ‘thinking’ sounded like ‘finking’. The expression ‘be quiet will you I am thinking’ suggests that he was not a man of high intelligence.

Finally the kidnapper had them park beside a minor road in a secluded field.  By this time it was in the small hours of 23 August. The road was called the A6. The location was the appositely named Deadman’s Hill. It was the wee hours of the morning. He tried to tie Valerie up and managed to do so. He asked Gregsten for the bag which was at Gregsten’s feet – full of clothes. Gregsten lent forward to get it. The gunman shot Gregsten twice in the head.

The woman shrieked and swore at the gunman, ”you b—— – you killed him!”.  The gunman claimed that Gregsten had scared him by moving too fast.

Later the gunman committed a crime against Miss Storie.  As he committed the crime against the female, a car drove by. The headlights illuminated the interior of the Morris Minor for a few seconds. Valerie Storie got a good look at her assailant’s face. He then permitted her to dress. The mysterious man ordered the young woman to show him how to drive the car – where the lights were and so on. She was ordered out of the car and onto the road. He then fired seven bullets at her. Five hit her. She fell and played dead. The male kicked the prostrate woman. She did not moved. The shooter was satisfied that she must be dead. He then got into the automobile.

The man drove off with the gears screaming. He clearly had very little experience with cars. The Morris Minor was seen being driven erratically. In 1961 very few people had cars. Two men in another vehicle were overtaken by the Morris Minor. They drove to catch up with it and got a good look at its occupant.

The car associated with the murder was allegedly seen in Redbridge, London at 7 am on 23 August.

DISCOVERY OF THE CORPSE

A car passed Valerie Storie in the middle of the night. She got up and cried for help and waved an item of clothing. The vehicle did not stop. Perhaps the drive assumed she was a lunatic. She had been badly wounded and was bleeding heavily.

At 6 am on 23 August Miss Storie was found by an Oxford undergraduate doing a traffic survey. The youth was stunned by the pool of blood beside an apparently peaceful scene. Bizarrely he asked, ‘’Are you all right?’’ Miss Storie immediately said, ‘’ No, I am not. I have been shot.’’ and so had the man who was lying on the road. Was the man lying there dead, the undergraduate inquired. Valerie believed that the man lying on the road was dead, ‘’Yes, I think so’’ she answered. The undergraduate felt for a pulse. Before he could gauge whether Gregsten had a pulse he instantly noticed that the body was stone cold. Gregsten was as dead as a doornail. Gregsten had been shot over 3 hours earlier.

The young man who found Valerie used a call box to summon an ambulance. He spoke to her as he waited for help. He noted down all the particulars on pieces of paper he had taken for the purpose of his traffic survey. The student was writing down all the testimony because he recognised that there was a high chance that Valerie would die from her injuries before the ambulance arrived. The police later arrived and the notes were handed over to them. The undergraduate never saw the notes again. Valerie said that the killer and kidnapper was a white about 30 years old.

The Morris Minor was found the next day in Redbridge – not so many miles from the scene of the murder. The car had been wiped clean of finger prints. The crime had been carried out in a very haphazard manner. However, the way that the criminal dealt with the car was crafty. It would probably take a seasoned criminal to do this.

There was a media storm. The case shocked the United Kingdom. There was wall to wall coverage in the newspapers on the radio and on television. It was extensively reported in the Republic of Ireland. The case became known as the A6 murder.

Did the gunman want money and the car? The couple had repeatedly offered him that. Why did he spend six hours with them? Why did he kill Gregsten? There was no particular reason to do so. Perhaps the gunman’s explanation was true. He just panicked and shot Gregsten thinking Gregsten was reaching for a weapon in the bag or something. Or was it genuinely unintentional – touching the trigger accidentally? Why did the kidnapper reveal so much about himself? Was it always his intention to kill the couple? Or did he only make up his mind much later?

What was the gunman doing in that field? The field was not near a railway station and a couple of miles from a bus stop. Did he walk there, or cycle there or drive there? Perhaps someone gave him a lift. Maybe he was trying to burgle houses and was then at a loss for a means of transport. Perhaps the car hijacking was opportunistic. He needed to get out of the area saw a car and that was that. It was very unwise of the kidnapper to say so much about himself. Having done that did he then decide that he had to kill the pair so that he could not be traced?

THE GUN

Some days later spent cartridges were found in a basement room in a the Vienna Hotel London. It was a very down market hotel. The cartridges were proven by ballistics tests to have come from the murder weapon. The manager had been suspicious of a young man who had not emerged for days. The man in question was Peter Louis Alphon who had been in the same pub as the couple the night of the murder.

A gun was found hidden under the back seat of the 36A bus in London. There were 60 rounds of ammunition with it.

The police put out a statement saying that they suspected Alphon in this case. P L Alphon handed himself into the police. It was midnight when he did so. The senior policeman in the case, Acott, came straight away. Acott interviewed Peter Alphon for five hours in the middle of the night.

Next day Miss Storie came to an identity parade. Alphon was there along with several other men of about the same description. Valerie Storie identified a volunteer as the killer – i.e. a man other than Alphon. The police questioned Alphon ferociously. In those days they would be openly hostile and scathing. They would do everything the could to intimidate someone without physically harming him. In some cases they did physically harm suspects. Alphon stood up to the harsh interrogation. He was an experienced criminal and knew how to handle police interviews. P L Alphon was not easily intimidated. He said he spent the night of the murder with his mother before going to the Alexandra Court Hotel. Mrs. Alphon did not exactly confirm it. She said she had seen her son on that night or possibly the night before or after. She could not remember the exact date. The police had no fingerpint, no positive ID and no confession. Mr. Alphon was released. Peter Alphon handing himself into the police had told in his favour. He refused to give samples of his body fluids or to reveal where the clothes were that he had worn on the day of the murder. He would not disclose where his luggage was. He may have believe that forensics would tie him to the murder. But why then hand himself in?

Alphon had registered at the Alexandra Court Hotel as Frederick Durrant. Why use a pseudonym? He may have been trying to conceal his whereabouts. On the other hand it did not help him establish an alibi.

Another person had stayed in the Vienna Hotel. He had signed in as J Ryan.

A hotel employee William Nudds was unsure who had stayed in the basement room. Was it J Ryan or was it Alphon? Mr. Nudds contradicted himself on this. He recalled that J Ryan asked directions to the 36 bus. The gun was found on bus 36 A. Not bus 36. But was it the hotel owner getting it slightly wrong? Or was it J Ryan getting it slightly wrong? Nudds was a petty criminal and had been a police informer. The police suspected that Nudds was changing his story in a way that he thought would ingratiate him with the police. They told him as much. William Nudds then confirmed that he was saying whatever he assumed the police wanted him to say to help them build their case.

There is a tendency to prefer letters that one finds in one’s own name. The letters ‘R Y A and N’ all appear in Hanratty. Ryan is also an Irish surname like Hanratty.  James Hanratty was a man of subnormal intelligence. The name Ryan is so short that even he could spell it. Hanratty’s initial was ‘J’. The gunman had told the couple to call him ‘Jim’ which is a nickname for anyone called ‘James.’ Hanratty was known as ‘Jimmy’ to his family. That is interchangeable with ‘Jim’.

Would Hanratty have been stupid enough to tell his kidnap victims his real name? Maybe he would. That is especially so if he intended to kill them. If he had planned to kill Michael Gregsten and Valerie Storie all along then it would not matter if he divulged his familiar name ‘Jim’.

The English police received a phone call from Ireland. A man with a bed and breakfast had had a young Englishman stay with him some time before. The guest signed in as J. Ryan. He said he was bad at writing and asked the guest house owner to write a postcard for him. J Ryan dictated for the other man to write. J. Ryan’s mother was ‘Mrs Hanratty.’

The police then published statements in a newspaper saying they wished to speak to James Hanratty in relation to the A6 murder. James Hanratty called the police several times to say he was not involved in the A6 murder. Why would he do this? Perhaps he was doing so because the police were implying he was the killer.

The police were getting anxious. It was embarrassing. They came under intense public pressure to produce results. Since the day she was found Miss Storie had asked the police to guarantee that her the man who had killed her lover would be brought to justice.

On September 7 a man broke into a house in Richmond-upon-Thames, London and assaulted a woman. He bragged that he was the A6 killer. The woman picked out this man at an identity parade. It was Alphon. But the police had already excluded him as a suspect. They were very closed minded on this.

THE ARREST OF HANRATTY

In October Mr. Hanratty was arrested in Blackpool, England. The police were legally entitled to take his fingerprints even without his permission. The police already had Hanratty’s fingerprints because he had been arrested several times. He volunteered to give hair, blood and saliva samples. He was not legally required to do so. Presumably he thought this would exonerate him. But he was a man of very limited ratiocinative ability. So he might have given these samples even if they would have been damning. It turned out that Hanratty has the same blood group as the killer. But 40% of the UK population have that same blood group. I do not know what blood group Alphon was.

The blood group did not prove that Hanratty was the killer but nor did it rule it out. If Alphon was innocent perhaps he would have volunteered his blood sample.

James Hanratty agreed that the police could take hair, blood and saliva samples from him. He also allowed them to take fibre from his clothes. He was not legally obliged to do this. Some have said this militates towards him being innocent. On the other hand he may have been so dim that he did not understand the significance of what he was agreeing to. Alphon, on the other hand had refused to do so. Does this suggest guilt? No, because Alphon could have thought that the police would use these items to fit him up – to plant evidence. Moreover, there would have been other crimes that Alphon committed and these samples could have tied him to them.

Hanratty had bright red hair. He felt this made him conspicuous. He dyed it black. He did a very bad job of it. Valerie said he assailant had fair hair. Could this have been her description of red hair badly dyed black? Bear in mind that she only saw him in the light for a few seconds when another car drove by. This lit up the interior of the Morris Minor for a few seconds. In this situation the inside of the car would not have been properly illuminated. In such a situation the colours would not appear properly.

Before the identity parade Hanratty allegedly said to one of the volunteers that he had committed the crime but was cocksure he would get away with it. This statement comes from the volunteer.

There was some evidence that Hanratty could not have been the killer. The police notes based on Valerie Storie’s first interview give the killer’s eyes as blue. In fact Hanratty’s eyes were brown. Some have said this was a clerical error. The police officer intended to write ‘eyes: br’ with ‘br’ being short for ‘brown.’ He accidentally wrote ‘bl’ which is short for ‘blue.’

Acott came up from London to interview Hanratty. The police made interview notes. The suspect was interviewed without the presence of a lawyer. This was typical for the time. Moreover, the interview notes are since proven to have been falsified. The interview notes were written up. They were later rewritten. There were well over 12 000 files on the case that the police had. Much of this was never shown to the defence.

In one of the interviews Hanratty allegedly said ”I want to kip”. ”Kip” is British slang for ”sleep”. This was a phrase that the gunman had used twice according to Valerie Storie. The police officer had Hanratty uttering this phrase at 9:30 in the morning! Some have taken this as a blatant fabrication on the part of an officer of the law. The aim being to establish that the expression ”I want to kip” was typical of Hanratty and therefore he was the killer. Even if Hanratty had said it the phrase was not uncommon.

It is more than possible that Hanratty would have been sleepy at 9:30 am especially if he had been awake for many hours. The stress of being suspected of murder might have given him a sleepless night. He might have been asking to slumber because the interview was going badly and he feared incriminated.

There was an identity parade. Hanratty was the only one with reddish hair. The police felt this was unfair. They wondered if they should make all the participants wear hats? In the end the police did not make anyone wear a hat. Miss Storie came in. She took up to 15 minutes to make an identification. Before she did so she had them all speak. She picked out Hanratty. Why did she take so long to pick him out? Does that undermine her identification? Or did she just want to be certain? She had got it wrong at the Alphon ID parade. The identification is surely vitiated by the red hair.

A few weeks before the arrest of James Hanratty, Valerie Storie wrote to the police, ‘my memory of this man is fading. I think I might not be able to identify him.’ This statement was not shown to the defence because it would help them.

Two men had seen the driver of the Morris Minor at 7 o clock in the morning. One picked out Hanratty. The other said it was not Hanratty. The man who had caught a glimpse of the driver of the Morris Minor had only seen the man for a few seconds from the side. Moreover, it might have been a different Morris Minor.

There was another eyewitness who allegedly saw the murder car in the small hours of 23 August. He too said that he identified Hanratty as the man at the wheel. This witness was said to be a man who wished to be on the right side of the police which is why he would testify to anything the police wanted him to say. This man saw the driver from a distance of 50 metres for about 3 seconds as the car drove at around 40 miles an hour. The Hanratty defence said that no one would possibly get a clear view under such circumstances and no one would then reliably identify the driver of the car a few months later.

There was another witness who saw a man driving the murder car and said that the driver was not Hanratty. Because this witness statement weakened the prosecution the police suppressed it. They only wanted evidence that helped the prosecution to be presented.

MURDER CHARGE

James Hanratty was charged with murder. Strangely he was not charged with attempted murder, kidnapping and car theft. Mr. Hanratty had a friend called Mr France who said that Hanratty found the 36A bus to be a good place to hide stolen goods. He did not say that Hanratty had hidden guns there.

The killer had said ”I have been on the run for four months.” Hanratty had been released from prison five months before the killing. If the killer was Hanratty then Hanratty had got this detail wrong. But four months or five months is almost the same. It depends how precise one is. What if it was more like four and a half months? Or did Valerie misremember what he said? The words ”for five months” could easily be confused with ”for four months.” Some say that there was a bid to frame Hanratty. If so could this have been part of it?

The killer appeared to be a dreadful driver. Whatever Hanratty’s other limitations he was an accomplished driver. Would he have ground his gears and not known where the lights were? In the stress of the moment he might have panicked and forgotten the basics. As his adrenaline was pumping he might have made some fundamental errors like that. Perhaps he had never driven a Morris Minor.

The prosecution claimed that Hanratty deliberately drove badly to make it appear that it was not him. That beggars belief. Of all the blinds to conceal his identity that is the most improbable. Moreover, the killer clearly assumed that Storie was dead. There was no need to drive badly on purpose.

There were eight witnesses who swore that they saw Hanratty in Liverpool the day before the murder. That was a Monday.

THE ESCAPE ROUTE

Gregsten had a logbook in his car. He recorded his journeys in pedantic detail. The police came into possession of the logbook. Acott used the milometer to calculate that after the murder the car was driven 200 miles. That is much longer than directly from Deadman’s Hill to Redbridge. Therefore the route of the car from Deadman’s Hill to Redbridge was circuitous and no one knows what route was taken. Those who identified Hanratty as the driver of the Morris Minor may well have seen a different Morris Minor. Indeed those who said that the driver of the Morris Minor was not Hanratty might also have seen the wrong Morris Minor. However, the killer drove the car about 3 o’clock on a weekday morning so there will have been very, very few cars on the road. The chances of someone seeing another Morris Minor on the same route at about the right time are very low indeed.

Two men claimed to have seen Hanratty driving the car through Ilford at 7 am. As the car was driven 200 miles from Deadman’s Hill to Redbridge it went a very roundabout route and would very probably not have been passing through Ilford at 7 am. It went into Avonmore Crescent. The Morris Minor seen at Ilford near Redbridge at that time could have been any Morris Minor. The witnesses did not claim to have remembered its registration number. The information about the car driving over 200 miles from Deadman’s Hill to Redbridge was not revealed to the defence. This would have been very useful to the defence. Then again the men who saw a grey Morris Minor who stated that the driver was not Hanratty could have been seeing the wrong Morris Minor. Wilfully withholding helpful information from the defence is prosecutorial misconduct.

Consider the erratic conduct of the kidnapper. Sitting in the car with his hostages for two hours whilst it was stationary was purposeless. If he wanted to rob or rape or murder he could have done these things. Holding people hostage was to no avail. Then he had Michael Gregsten drive on a wild goose chase around London and the Home Counties. The gunman had no idea where he wanted to go. He was labile and aimless. After the murder the gunman drove 200 miles and ended up less than 50 miles distant from the site of the murder. This yet again shows purposelessness. Was it that he could not read the road signs? Hanratty was illiterate so this might explain it. Whose character does this behaviour square with? James Hanratty was a not very successful thief. His changing his alibi seems to fit the pattern.

On the other hand Alphon had no difficulty reading the signs. He wished to avoid conviction but handed himself in. Once eliminated from inquiries he went to the trial rather than distance himself from proceedings. Only three months after the death of Hanratty people were astonished that Alphon began to hint that he, not Hanratty, was the killer. Alphon’s admission to the murder and then retraction and then admission and then retraction might suggest that he was the sort of man who would be as irrational and as fickle as the kidnapper.

While Hanratty was awaiting trial another remand prisoner said that Hanratty had vouchsafed to him that he had killed Gregsten. The police subsequently spoke at the stoolpigeon’s trial and asked the court to go easy on him because he had assisted the police.

Hanratty was born into a working class family. He left school at 15 and did some dead end jobs. He soon became a criminal. He was a pathological liar and was diagnosed as psychopathic. If Hanratty was suspected of murder today he might be judged too mentally ill to stand trial. Alternatively, he might be held to be mentally a child.

Initially the case was to be heard at the Old Bailey. Then it was decided that it would be held at Bedford – near the scene of the crime. Some feared local prejudice. As the crime had taken place there the jury might feel duty-bound to convict.

THE TRIAL

The trial was attended by P L Alphon. Strangely, the jury was not told that Mr Gregsten had been having an affair with Miss Storie at the time of the murder. Could that extra-marital affair have provided an explanation for an otherwise motiveless murder? If the jurors had been informed that Miss Storie was having an extramarital relationship with Mr Gregsten then that might have made them less likely to believe.

THE ALIBI

The defence’s story was that James Hanratty had been in Liverpool on the day of the slaying. He was with three friends but refused to identify them. His life was on the line and he refused to name them? Not very convincing is it? Perhaps they were fellow criminals and identifying them might have linked them to crimes committed in that city on that day.

James Hanratty mentioned two people he spoke to in Liverpool – shop assistants. Two of them remembered him. But they could not be sure they met him on 22 August. Clearly the defendant had been in Liverpool at some point. But the date in question was not necessarily that time. He was arrested in Blackpool in October – not far from Liverpool. It is possible that he passed through Liverpool between the date of the A6 killing and the day of his apprehension. Liverpool is a port city on the Irish Sea and many ferries sail from there to Ireland. Hanratty had reason to pass through Liverpool because he sailed to and from Ireland on many occasions.

The defendant changed his alibi from being in Liverpool the day of the murder to being in Rhyl. However, there is evidence that he was in London the day of the murder. He picked up his dry cleaning in London that day and was at someone’s house at 4 pm. If Hanratty was in London on the day of the kidnapping then this weakens Hanratty’s claim to have been in Liverpool or Rhyl on the relevant. Being in London on the day of the abduction would have placed Hanratty near the scene of the crime.

All the rooms at the Rhyl guesthouse on 22 August were accounted for the woman who ran it said. Hanratty remembered staying in a bedroom with a green bath. The woman then said there was a room that she occasionally used at the top of the house and it had a green bath. He might have stayed there. But no one was signed in as staying in that room. No other guests in the guesthouse remembered Hanratty staying there on 22 August. They all had breakfast in the same room. The defence team said there was no room for him to eat in the dining room so he had eaten in his bedroom which was why no one else saw him.

There were some witnesses who claimed that they saw Hanratty in Rhyl on or around 22 August.

The killer did not approach the car until 9:30pm on 22 August. There is no evidence that Hanratty was near Maidenhead that evening. It is very easy to get from London to Maidenhead in five and a half hours. If he had been in London at 4 pm on 22 August he could have been in Maidenhead that night.

Mr Michael Sherrard was the defence barrister of James Hanratty. Michael Sherrard tried to convince his client not to change his alibi. Mr Hanratty would not hear of it. Sherrard, counsel for the defence, insisted that his client would be shooting himself in the foot if he did so. But Hanratty was adamant. His brief asked him to sign a statement to the effect that he had been advised that changing his story would fatally undermine his defence. He did so. Cognizant of the terminal effect that altering his alibi might have one him he did so nonetheless.

Miss Storie’s spine had been hit by a bullet. She was in a wheelchair for life because she was paralysed for life.

In the witness box James Hanratty came over as overbearing and sneering. His hostile and haughty demeanour did not produce a congenial impression on the jury. As a hardened criminal his bumptiousness was to be expected.  On the other hand Valerie Storie was tranquil, composed and unwavering. Her quiet dignity won the hearts of the jurors. Mr. Sherrard prefaced his cross examination by stating that everyone had the deepest empathy for her monstrous ordeal and no one diminished the horror of that one iota. An innocent man had already been killed in this sordid affair. Sherrard did not want to see a second innocent man killed. There is no question which of Hanratty and Miss Storie was more likeable. The case came down to which of them the jury preferred to believe. Valerie Storie was the Crown’s star witness. Her identification was the key plank of the prosecution’s case.

The fact that Miss Storie was engaged in an adulterous relationship with Gregsten was not mentioned to the jury. Given the mores of this time this would have damaged her image. There might even have been some who, learning of the adultery, would have thought that the couple got what they deserved. The affair was not strictly germane to the case.

Witnesses swore that Hanratty was in Liverpool the day of the murder. Some swore that he was in Rhyl. Hanratty had perjured himself with one of his alibis. But which one? Or was it both? His credibility was destroyed.

The jury retired to mull the verdict. After several hours they asked for a definition of beyond reasonable doubt. The judge gave them guidance. Then they returned with a verdict.

VERDICT AND SENTENCE

Hanratty was found guilty. The judge asked the defendant if he had anything to say. Hanratty repeated his denial. The beak on the bench then donned the black cap and pronounced the sentence of death.

There was an appeal. It was dismissed by the House of Lords which then functioned as the Supreme Court. There was a campaign for a reprieve. The Home Secretary could advise Her Majesty the Queen to exercise the royal prerogative of mercy. The Queen always went by the advice of her ministers. She had the legal power to commute a death sentence to life imprisonment. The Home Secretary decided that there was no case for a reprieve.

Сharles France was a friend of Hanratty’s who testified against Hanratty. After James Hanratty’s appeal failed Mr. France committed suicide. France left a suicide note stating that he felt terrible for the suffering he had caused the Hanratty family.

Perhaps the family should have tried to internationalise the case. J Hanratty was born in England to Irish parents. The child of an Irish parent has the right to Irish citizenship. The Hanratty family could have asked the Irish Government to intervene. The idea that an innocent Irishman was due to be hanged in England would have incensed Ireland. The huge protests might have convinced the Home Secretary to recommend that the royal prerogative of mercy be exercised. Then Her Britannic Majesty would have been graciously pleased to commute the sentence to life imprisonment. The Home Secretary was R.A. Butler. Rab Butler, as he was known, declined to advise her Gracious Majesty to grant a reprieve.

THE HANGING

The night before Mr Hanratty was due to be put to death he told his father he would ”take it like a man.” In fairness to James Hanratty the only account of the execution states that he did indeed demonstrate unutterable courage.

In the small hours of 4 April Hanratty’s lawyers were still calling up the Home Office with what they said was new evidence to have their client granted at least a stay of execution while the evidence was considered. These attempts to have the execution at least postponed were dismissed.

James Hanratty maintained his innocence to the end. On 4 April he was hanged.  There were no complications. A witness to Hanratty’s death recalled that the condemned ”strutted” in and maintained his truculent composure to the very end.

ALPHON’S ADMISSIONS

After the execution of Hanratty a gay couple befriended Alphon. One of these men was named Jean Justice. Perhaps this was nominative determinism. The son of a Belgian diplomat Jean Justice became fixated with the case. Jean Justice’s boyfriend was Jeremy Fox. Fox was an Old Etonian barrister. Mr. Fox said he was part of the establishment and not anti-establishment but he simply believed that the judicial system had made a mistake.

The gay couple wined him and dined him. He told them on numerous occasions that he was the A6 killer. Was this him talking nonsense when drunk? Was he telling them what they wanted to hear? He was singing for his supper. On the other hand it may have been a case of in vino veritas. The gay couple recorded Alphon on the phone without his knowledge. They had recordings of him making incriminating statements. When he discovered that he had been recorded without his permission he flew into a rage.

Alphon also told them that he had received GBP 5 000 from a man for ending the affair between Mr. Gregsten and Miss Storie. Who was this man? Alphon had no job and deposited GBP 7 600 into his account between October 1961 and June 1962. That was a phenomenal amount of money for the time. October 1961 was the month that Hanratty was charged with murder. Note that Alphon did not say he was paid to kill – only to end the affair. Who would want the affair ended? The blatant suspect would be Mrs. Gregsten. But she seemed to have accepted the split from her husband. La Storie said her affair was no explanation for the murder. Mrs. Gregsten visited her in hospital and the two got on well. Moreover, GBP 5 000 was a staggering sum at the time. It was like GBP 130 000 today. Mrs. Gregsten was a housewife and her husband was a government scientist. They did not have that kind of money. The claim of receiving GBP 5 000 to end the affair is likely to be bogus. That does not disprove Alphon’s unpressured confession to the murder.

Where did the £ 7 500 deposited in Alphon’s account come from? Presumably he was a very successful thief. Or did Justice and Fox pay him some money?

Mr. Alphon appeared to feel guilt-stricken about the death of Hanratty. He visited the Hanratty family and commiserated with them. It is surely surprising that they allowed him into their house. If Hanratty had not killed Gregsten then who had? The obvious other suspect is Alphon. If Alphon had fessed up at the time then Hanratty would not have been killed. Tellingly, Mr. Alphon did not seem to feel a twinge of sympathy for Mr. Gregsten or Miss Storie. James Hanratty’s father did not believe that Alphon was the A6 killer. He dismissed Alphon ” a nutcase”. Mr. Hanratty had every reason to say that Alphon was the A6 killer because that would exculpate James Hanratty.

In 1967 Alphon took the extraordinary step of calling a press conference in Paris. He announced that he slew Gregsten. He had put himself in legal jeopardy. A posthumous appeal could be allowed – clearing Hanratty. People were zealously campaigning for this at the time. John Lennon walked around with a sign saying ‘Britain murdered Hanratty’. In 1949 Timothy Evans was hanged for murder. In 1952 his conviction was posthumously overturned. John Christie was convicted for those murders for which Evans had previously been wrongly convicted. Christie was then executed. So in 1967 Alphon could have been talking his way onto the gallows. That year he want on ITN to say that he carried out the A6 murder.

John Lennon bankrolled a documentary about the A6 case. It was fronted by Paul Foot. The veteran ultra-left journalist argued that Hanratty was innocent of the crime.

P L Alphon wrote a lengthy confession which he gave to Jean Justice. Mr. Justice published a book entitled ‘Murder is Murder’ in France. Justice gave these to the Home Office. It outlined the case against Alphon. Alphon said that he decided to slay the couple because of the sort of people they were. Was this because they were adulterers? Or because they were of a certain social class? He said that he had given Mr. Gregsten two chances to escape but Gregsten had failed to so. This was probably an allusion to the opportunity to run away at the petrol station and the shop. Some have taken this as proof positive of Alphon’s guilt as in Alphon could not have known about the two occasions in which Gregsten was allowed out of the car by the kidnapper. However, Alphon could easily have known about the particulars of the kidnapping without being the killer. The police may have told him about this when they questioned him. Moreover, the newspapers detailed the ordeal. Lastly during the trial (which Alphon attended) Miss Storie gave a full account of the event.

Mr. Alphon stated in 1966 that his taped confession and written confession was him inventing a work of fiction. He was helping Jean Justice write a novel. If Justice really thought that Alphon was a killer was it not unwise to hang around him? This was especially so if Alphon committed the murder as part of a crusade against indecency as Alphon said. Homosexuality was legally termed indecency at the time.

The death penalty was suspended in 1965. It was not abolished. There was much talk about ending the moratorium. Hanging could easily have been reintroduced. In fact in 1970 it was abolished. Even then Alphon would have faced a life sentence. Is it crazier to confess if you are guilty or if you are innocent?

The behaviour of the kidnapper fits with Alphon’s personality. He was very boastful and unstable. That is why he was rabbiting on to the couple in the car. Another fact that points towards Alphon being guilty is that Hanratty spoke hesitantly and left very long pauses in his speech. Alphon’s conversational patter was of a reasonable speed. It was not like a machinegun. The killer spoke with a Cockney accent which Alphon did not.  Instead P L Alphon spoke Standard British English. You can see videos of him on YouTube when he felt placid and his accent was Standard Southern British English. Except when Alphon was stressed he lapsed into Cockney. The killer’s behaviour suggests grave anxiety.

Alphon did not know how to drive. Valerie’s evidence suggested that the killer was terrible at driving as did the two other men who had seen the Morris Minor.

Valerie Storie said that it was clear that ‘Jim’ was not the true name of her assailant. If she is right then this suggests that James Hanratty was innocent.

Alphon was the son of a highly ranking Scotland Yard detective. Was Scotland Yard trying to protect its own? His face was more similar to Valerie Storie’s description than Hanratty’s face. Some think that the police closed ranks to save Alphon. But the police tried to get evidence to convict him. This theory is flawed.

As Mr. Alphon was in the pub with Gregsten and Miss Storie he could have followed the couple to their car. As he was on foot it would have taken him 30-45 minutes to get there. Indeed finding it in the dark may have been difficult. Did he go to the Dorney Reach area with the intention of slaying the pair? Alternatively it could have been an opportunistic crime. On ITN in 1967 he stated that he killed them as part of a crusade against immortality. He was incensed at their adultery. But if, against expectation, Alphon was a intending to kill them why did he not shoot them right away? He might have thought he was too close to houses – his shots would be heard. He had been seen in the same alehouse as them earlier. Perhaps he wanted to get them to a remote location for the slaying to take place. Moreover, he might have been steeling himself to go through with it. Could he bring himself to kill? If his actuation was to penalise adultery committing a crime was a strange way of expressing disapprobation.

For years the Hanratty family demanded that the case be reopened. In 1999 they finally got their way. They wanted DNA to be used to have their relative’s conviction found unsafe. They said that this would be like winning the lottery.

Charles Sydney Gibbes was born on 19 January 1876. His birthplace was the small town of which is more or less in the centre of the United Kingdom. He came from Yorkshire which is the largest county in England. Yorkshire people profess that their county is the most magnificent in the kingdom. They sometimes allude to Yorkshire as ”God’s Own County.”

Gibbes grew up in an industrial town called Rotherham. His father, John, was a bank manager of the Old Bank in Rotherham. Gibbes had several siblings and some of them died young. Gibbes was raised in a Christian household. His family were Protestants like over 90% of the people in Great Britain at the time. Gibbes went to a local school. He then attended Aberystwyth University for a year before applying to Cambridge.

Gibbes was a bright boy and very sincere. His family thought that he should become a minister of religion. Gibbes went up to Cambridge University. This was no small achievement at the time for a middle class boy from a town without a tradition of university education.

Gibbes enrolled at St John’s College on 27 April 1896. In those times it was not unusual to start university in the middle of the academic year. These days it would be impossible. St John’s was and is a fairly distinguished college. He studied Moral Science Tripos. Moral Science was Philosophy and some Theology. Tripos is the Cambridge way of saying a degree with public exams in all three years of the course’s duration. Gibbes came into contact with many upper class undergraduates. His mild Yorkshire accent was frowned on by the nobbier boys. He soon lost his accent and affected something close to a public school accent.  Gibbes added an ‘e’ to his surname. No one else spells Gibbs that way. He had no trouble graduating in 1899.

Gibbs then stayed on at Cambridge to do a course to prepare him for ordination. He was recognised as being high minded and morally upstanding. His appearance and manners were impeccable. There was a more light hearted side to his personality. He enjoyed the theatre. He expressed his attraction to women but nothing came of it.  He was also known to anger. He continued his seminarian studies in Salisbury. He came to believe that he was unsuitable to be a priest.

Gibbes cared about getting things right in every sense of the phrase. He was a little introverted. He was courteous, dependable, unassuming, pragmatic, morally upstanding, honest, austere, rigid, urbane, smartly attired, wise and very mature. He was so rigid in his habits that some wondered whether he bordered on Asperger’s syndrome.

Charles Sydney Gibbes was handy at languages. Having completed his theological studies but deciding against ordination he was unsure what to do with himself. He taught for a while in the UK. Caning was used very freely for minor misdeeds such as being late to a lesson. Gibbes was as ready as others to cane boys for trivial infractions of the rules. This was not seen as being at all inconsistent with the Christian ethic. In 1901 Gibbes, being an adventurous sort, took a position teaching English in Russia. He took ship for St Petersburg. He taught for two notable families there. Later he was employed at the St Petersburg School of Law. The Russian upper crust was coming to recognise the importance of English. Up until that time French had been regarded as by far the most estimable foreign language. However, in the years leading up to the First World War the popularity of English was growing partly due to the Imperial Family speaking it at home. Gibbes became vice-president of the St Petersburg Guild English Teachers. The fact that such a guild existed indicates how numerous such teachers were in the capital.

Gibbes was curious about the mystical side of Christianity. He also wrote down his dreams. He even had his palm read. He seemed to be on a spiritual quest. He attended the Anglican Church in St Petersburg. He found it pallid and unsatisfying. The Orthodox Church seemed to embody the splendid mystery of faith. It was dark yet colourful, it was headily atmospheric and it struck a chord with him.

The Tsarina Alexandra heard about Gibbes. In 1908 he was invited to improve the accent of the Grand Duchesses. As part of his contract he was accommodated in the Catherine Palace. He began with the eldest pair of the Tsar’s daughters. They already spoke fluent English but had slight Russian accents with Irish inflection. This Irish influence came from their Irish nanny Margaretta Eagar. In 1913 he was appointed English tutor to the Tsaervich. He worked together with the Swiss Pierre Gilliard who taught the family French.

Mr Gibbes was aware of his pupils’ shortcomings. He wrote of Olga, ‘she was easily irritated and her manners were a little harsh.’ Some historians such as Greg King and Penny Wilson had claimed that Gibbes was only mediocre as a tutor.

Gibbes was an instant hit with the Tsarevich. Gibbes was old enough to be the boy’s father but would have been a fairly young father.  C S Gibbes later wrote of Alexei, ‘ Disagreeable things he bore silently and without grumbling. He was also kind heated and during the last period of his life he was the only one who liked to give things away. Influenced through his emotions he did what he was told by his father. His mother loving him passionately, could not be firm with him, he got most of his wishes through her.’

Gibbes wrote that the Tsar had ‘a very honest character, a compassionate heart and a hatred for any sort of familiarity.’

In February 1917 the Tsar was obliged to abdicate. The Provisional Government under Prince Lvov assumed power and abolished the monarchy. Incidentally despite his title Prince Lvov was not related to the Romanovs. The Romanovs were then confined to the Alexander Palace in Tsarskoe Selo. Gibbes wanted to live in the Alexander Palace to so he could be closer to the family but the Provisional Government declined his request.

The Bolsheviks launched their revolution in October 1917. The Romanovs were removed to Tobolsk in Siberia.  Gibbes voluntarily accompanied the family. Indeed he had to apply to the Russian Prime Minister Alexander Kerensky for permission to move to Tobolsk. He did so out of a sense of duty. One of the Romanovs maids was Anna Demidova fell in love with Gibbes and made overtures to him. He ignored her and wrote she was ‘ a woman of a singularly timid and shrinking disposition.’ Because Gibbes demonstrated no attraction towards women. Itt has been speculated that he was gay. There is no evidence that he ever had a gay liaison.

The Imperial Family had had all its wealth confiscated. The Romanovs kept some hidden jewels with them. The Romanovs were unable to pay for the services of Gibbes and others. Gibbes and his colleagues chose to serve their master solely out of devotion. Mr Gibbes was in a bad financial situation when another imperial retainer implored him to lend her some money. She was Baroness Sophie Buxhoevden. The baroness was a Dane who had been part of the Romanov household for several years. Gibbes unwisely lent her 1 300 roubles which she never repaid. She later claimed that Gibbes had not lent her anything. Gibbes mentioned this loan in correspondence with Gilliard. He was unlikely to invent this in a letter to a third party.

In April 1918 the Tsar was taken away from his family. He was to be conducted to Moscow and put on trial by the Bolsheviks. The Romanovs put on a farewell party. They expected Nikolai to be executed. Gibbes recalled, ‘It was the most mournful and  depressing party I ever attended. There was not much talk and no pretence at gaiety. It was solemn and tragic: a fit prelude to an inescapable tragedy ‘ Anna Demidova said to him, ‘I am so frightened Mr Gibbes I do not know what to do.’ The Tsarina elected to accompany her husband. With the parents away an even greater responsibility fell on Gibbes’ shoulders. In fact after a few months the parents were returned to their children after a few weeks without a trial ensuing.

Gibbes was later moved to Yekaterinaburg (Sverdlovsk) when the Romanovs were there. It was May 1918 when they travelled by the steamship Rus along the river to Yekaterinaburg. C S Gibbes recalled the last meal the children ate in Tobolsk. Gibbes managed to find some levity even in this grim situation. ‘       It was only on this last evening that we called for the two remaining bottles of wine. It was impossible to take them away and it was agreed that the next best thing to do was to drink them. While we were doing so the new commandant was heard sneaking down the corridor. We had only just time to hide the bottles under the table. He walked in and stood by the door. He gave a quizzical look all around. We felt like schoolboys caaught doing something naughty. Our eyes met and we could not contain ourselves any longer and fell about in wild laughter.      ‘

On the voyage Yekaterinaburg the predicament of the Romanovs became appreciably worse. The Red Army soldiers were openly hostile and insolent. They subjected the family to cat calls. ‘It was dreadful what they did.’ Gibbes adopted son later recalled his father telling him the screams of the grand duchesses haunted him for the rest of his life. ‘’It was his worst memory even more so than learning that the family had been marytred’’ said George Gibbes of his father.  Gibbes was implying that the soldiers fondled the princesses against their will. Was he even implying that they were raped?

However, C S Gibbes was not held in Ipatiev House which the Bolsheviks called the House of Special Purpose. He was not allowed into that house to meet his former employers. Mr Gibbes and Gilliard were housed in a railway carriage. He and Gilliard had come to Yekaterinaburg of their own free will but they were informed that they were not permitted to leave.

Not all servants of the Romanovs showed such fidelity. Baroness Buxhoevoden was one who told the Bolsheviks were hiding their jewels. The jewels were then sequestrated by the Bolsheviks. In gratitude for her assistance the Bolshevisk let this woman go.  She returned to her native Denmark. The other servants of the Romanovs were held as prisoners.

In May 1918 Gibbes and Gilliard were taken out of Yekaterinaburg and held in a nearby town. He and Gibbes had sent messages to the British consul and the Swedish consul pleading with them to intercede with the Bolsheviks to prevent the Romanovs from coming to harm. The British consul assured Gibbes that there was nothing to worry about. Gibbes had to spend a lot of time cooped up with his Swiss colleague Gilliard. Relations between the two frayed at this critical juncture.

Gibbes found out about the liquidation of the Romanovs soon after it occurred. He was devastated. At first he could not believe it. He desperately wished to think that at least some of the family had survived. He went to Ipatiev House and gathered a few relics of the family. He was to treasure these oddments to the end of his days. When the Whites took the town he helped with the inquiry. C S Gibbes and his colleague Gilliard did their best to establish the truth of what happened the night of 17/18 July 1918. Were the Romanovs really killed? All of them? Where were they interred? Gibbes and Gilliard unwillingly arrived at the conclusion that all of the Romanovs had been shot dead. There were rumours within weeks of the killings that one of the family survived – that it was the tsarevich or one of the grand duchesses although not Anastasia. (The Anastasia canard was to come only a few years later.)Gibbes and Gilliard helped the White Russian commission of inquiry into the slayings of the Romanovs. Gibbes and Gilliard also conducted their own inquiry in case the White Russian investigation was tainted by bias. Moreover, an investigation by two foreigners might carry more weight abroad than a Russian one in the midst of a civil war where the two sides had every reason to exaggerate or invent crimes attributable to their enemies. Gibbes and Gilliard had also lost some of their colleagues. Dr Botkin and several of the household staff had also been murdered for the crime of working for the Romanovs. The Reds were  vindictive enough to kill Gibbes’ pet dog. Gibbes and Gilliard visited the Four Brothers Mine where the burnt remains of the Romanovs had been cast. They worked closely with Sokolov – one of the Romanovs’ servants – in investigating the killings.

Charles Sydney Gibbes later fled east as the Reds looked poised to retake the town. He was later captured by the Reds but soon released. The British Army as well as several other armies intervened in Russia to assist the Whites. Gibbes was given an administrative position with the British Forces in Siberia. He left Russia by way of Manchuria. There as a large White Russian community there. He adopted a 15 year old Russian orphan there whom he named George Paveliev. Gibbes finally sailed back to the UK which had had not seen for years. His adoptive son came with him. He later bought a farm for George when the boy had grown up

Gibbes moved back and forth between Manchuria and England. It was not until 1928 that he claimed his MA from Cambridge. He was deeply impressed by the White Russians he knew. This caused him to be baptised into the Orthodox Church. C S Gibbes adulted his late pupil the tsarevich. Finally he was ordained as a monk. He had a tonsure. He wished to take the name Father Alexei but this was refused. He took the name Nicholas in religious contexts. This was in memory of the late Tsar. Gibbes helped to found an Orthodox Church in Oxford.  When he led prayers for the repose of the souls of the Romanovs he would weep before composing himself. Gibbes faith was not just about prayer. He devoted himself to helping the impoverished. He lived as a monk until his death in 1963.

There is still and Orthodox Church in Oxford but it is not in the building that Gibbes had.

Kurt Hahn was a German educationalist.

Hahn was born in Berlin in 1886. He was from a liberal Jewish family. His education was conducted in Germany. He suffered sunstroke as a child and this affected him permanently. He had to avoid hot climates which is why he gravitated to the frigid north.

Kurt Hahn attended a number of universities as was common for German undergraduates at the time. These were Heidelberg, Frieberg and Gottingen. An undergraduate would go to one university for a year, to another for two years and perhaps another for a further year. He matriculated at Christ Church, Oxford University. Hahn perfected his English. He was very broadminded and happily attended chapel. At that stage he did not convert to the Christian faith. Like many Germans he raved about Shakespeare. He was convinced that Shakespeare’s works were better in  German than the original. In the summers of 1910-14 he took holidays in northern Scotland.

Hahn was in the United Kingdom when the First World War broke out. All voyages to and from Germany were forbidden. He attempted to reach the coast and take ship for the Netherlands. From there he planned to travel to his homeland.

Kurt Hahn was arrested an interned as an enemy alien. After two years an exchange of civilians was agreed between the UK and Germany. German civilians were repatriated to Germany by way of the Netherlands which was neutral.

Hahn then spent the war in a government office in Berlin. His task was to translate British newspapers into German so that his government would have an idea of what the Allies were thinking.

Kurt Hahn came to work for the Margrave of Baden as his private secretary. Max von Baden was a man of liberal nostra. This was unusual for a German nobleman. Von Baden had briefly been chancellor in 1918. He had been one of those who saw that the military outlook was utterly hopeless for Germany and the only sane thing to do was to seek an armistice immediately. The Margrave of Baden is credited as one of those people who ended the First World War.

Hahn had come to develop his own educational philosophy. This was predicated on the teachings of Plato. He wanted a school that provided an education that was both classical and modern. Pupils were to be taught integrity, teamwork and a respect for nature. He wanted to do away with the petty rules of most schools and the overemphasis on academic learning. He aimed to provide a holistic education encompassing sports, camping, music and theatre. Drama played almost no role in formal education at the time. He considered the example of Eton. He saw much that he admired in terms of scholastic achievement and sports. However, he looked askance at Eton’s snobbery, artificiality and frippery.

The Margrave of Baden invited Hahn to open at school at his palace in southern Germany: Schloss Salem. Salem is short for Jerusalem and means ‘peace’ in Classical Hebrew. The name is pronounced ”ZA – lem”.

Kurt Hahn opened his school at Schloss Salem. This has an idyllic setting by Lake Constance. The school was mixed. The uniform was unpretentious and allowed for ease of movement. He also promoted pupils to have power over the others. If a group of boys were found to be misbehaving and one of them was a prefect then only the prefect was punished. This was because he should have been responsible enough to stop it.Hahn was a very generous spirited person who despised national prejudices. He had remained friends with many Britishers despite the First World War.

Hahn used the hymn ”We kneel and appeal to the God of all justice” as the Salem school song. It was in German of course.

Hahn wanted to challenge pupils. He insisted that they must be made physically fit. They must all be imbued with manual skills. They must also provide a public service by learning first aid or helping the fire brigade. His ideas were too reformist for some. In 1923 a reactionary tried to assassinate him.

In the late 1920s the Nazi Party became prominent. Hahn admitted to having some respect for the Nazis discipline and energy but he was a centrist. He was horrified by the Nazism glorification of brutality. He was an outspoken critic of their mindlessness, their thuggery and their philistinism. Hahn recognised that after 2 000 000 deaths in the First World War the last thing Germany needed was another war. The Nazism virulent anti-Semitism worried him since he was Jewish by parentage. The increasing viciousness of the National Socialists alarmed Hahn. Hahn read about a left winger who was kicked to death by Nazis in the immediate presence of his mother. Kurt Hahn then wrote a letter to all past pupils of Salem and said they must either support Salem or the Nazis but they could not support both. The two philosophies were totally incompatible. It was a gallant thing to do but Hahn was a marked man.

Adolf Hitler became chancellor in January 1933. Hahn was immediately arrested and his school was closed down. He had notable friends iin the United Kingdom including the Prime Minister James Ramsay MacDonald. Ramsay MacDonald was contacted and he interceded for Hahn. After three days the Nazi Government released Hahn at the UK Government’s request.

Dr Hahn travelled to the United Kingdom. He cast around for suitable locations to set up a new edition of Salem. He visited Moray in Scotland. It was an area where he had holidayed before the Great War. He found out about an old stately home in Scotland called Gordonstoun. Gordonstoun House that had beloned to the Gordon Cumming family. Hahn had a look and decided it would be ideal. It was deep in the countryside and therefore far from the distractions and temptations of city life. The huge grounds provided plenty of scope for sports and camping. It was within walking distance of the coast.

Hahn opened his school in 1934. Gordonstoun School began with two pupils. Hats off to this parents who were courageous enough to take a gamble on Gordonstoun. The school grew rapidly.

The boys wore knee length shorts, grey shirts, blue jumpers. They did not wear ties expect on formal occasions. This was a marked contrast to the overly formal and restrictive uniforms of the time. Boys in almost every other school wore hats or caps. Gordonstoun was very go ahead right from the start.

Hahn tried to keep punishment to a minimum. Nevertheless he allowed caning and administered the punishment in person.

Sports were a major part of the time table. Everyone had to learn to sail. It was called seamanship. Everyone had to go on regular camping expeditions. There was also military training. This was perhaps the first outward bound school. Outdoor education was a crucial part of the curriculum. Kurt Hahn wanted sport to be non-competitive most of the time. Oddly he knew little of the Corinthian spirit himself. Hahn did not always practise what he preached and was a fiercely competitive tennis player well into his 50s.

Dr Hahn also made sure that design and technology was in the timetable. Many independent schools sneered at this as being something for the working class. Pupils who could afford Gordonstoun were middle class or upper class. Hahn disliked snobbery but financial reality meant that his school could take very few proletarian pupils.

All pupils were required to join a service. This could be the fire brigade or coast guard service for example.

The school was founded as a Christian school but did not align itself with any denomination. The great majority of pupils were Church of Scotland or Church of England.

Hahn brought some of his colleagues with him from Germany. The school had very little money so some of them had to work for bed and board for the first couple of years. They received no salary! Some of his Jewish pedagogical friends were especially eager to get out of Germany for reasons that do not need stating. The boys of Gordonstoun gained an excellent grounding in German because most of their masters were German!

Gordonstoun founded a preparatory school called Wester Elchies in 1936. This was 20 miles away. Boys would attend Wester Elchies from the age of 7 to 13. Thereafter they would go on to Gordonstoun.

Hahn invented a flag for the school with a white and a purple bar. The white denoted purity and the purple honour. The motto is ‘Plus est en vous’ – there is more in you (than you think). Plus est en vous had been seen written on a wall in Belgium and it inspired Kurt Hahn.

The buildings of the school were very widely dispersed over the estate. This compelled boys to walk fast to all activities. Hahn thought this was tremendous for their athleticism.

In 1936 the school welcomed a most distinguished pupil. He was Prince Philip of Greece. Prince Philip had left Greece as a baby and grown up in London and Paris. He was a second cousin of King George VI. Prince Philip was partly of German extraction.

The school was soon attracting pupils from all over the United Kingdom.

Dr Hahn became a British citizen. This was vital since it meant he was not interned in 1939.Dr Kurt Hahn converted to Christianity. He sometimes preached in the Church of Scotland.

Dr Hahn helped to bring more Jewish Germans to the UK. He saved their lives.

Although Dr Hahn’s English was impeccable he had an unmissable German accent. It caused him to receive many frosty stares when travelling by train during the Second World War.

 

At the outbreak of the Second World War many called for Adolf Hitler to be assassinated. Hahn showed his extreme perhaps inane degree of humanity in saying that Hitler should not be assassinated. Dr Hahn said that shooting people solves nothing. He cited the example of the assassination of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand.

Gordonstoun recruited a PE teacher who was a refugee from Russia. When he was exasperated with the boys he would recite gobbets of the Bible to calm himself down. This was the only thing they had been taught to do at school in Russia.

In the Second World War the army commandeered the school under the Defence of the Realm Act. The school was moved to Wales for a few years. It returned after the war.

Dr Hahn was prominent in seeking to restore amicable relations between Germany and the UK after the war. He reopened Salem as soon as was practicable. He visited his devastated native land. He arranged many exchanges between Gordonstoun and Salem. Except Salem was said to be haunted by a ghost named ‘Spookie’.

In 1947 Prince Philip wed Princess Elizabeth. This brought publicity to the school. This princess became queen in 1952.

In the 1950s it became the norm for Gordonstounians to spend one of their five years in Salem.

The Prince of Wales and other members of the royal family attended Gordonstoun.

With his former pupil Dr Hahn helped to found the Duke of Edinburgh Award Scheme. This awards people a bronze, silver or gold for achievement. Someone on the D of E scheme must participate in sport, serve their community and go on an expedition.

Dr Hahn also helped to set up the United World Colleges. These exist around the world and provide two years of pre university schooling. One of them is Atlantic College in Wales.

Altyre School was founded about 10 miles away from Gordonstoun. Altyre was very small. For some lessons they had to cycle to Gordonstoun. This arrangement did not last. Eventually Altyre School was closed and a house called Altyre was built at Gordonstoun.

Wester Elchies outgrew its size. So another house was purchased across the river Spey in 1947. It was called Aberlour House. Wester Elchies and Aberlour House were one school on two sites. They were 3 miles apart. Juniors would be at Wester Elchies for three years. They would proceed to Aberlour House for a further three years. Therefater they would go on to Gordonstoun for five years. The prep school began to take girls in the 1950s but Gordonstoun did not.

A levels started to be considered important after the Second World War. Prior to that pupils had sat the schools certificates exams. Gordonstoun took the fateful decision to take A levels which are not a Scottish qualification. Almost every other school in Scotland does Highers which are a uniquely Scottish exam.

The school’s fame spread rapidly. It took pupils from the United States, India, Australia and many other lands.

One of the houses in Gordonstoun is called Round Square. This is because there are no corners in it. Gordonstoun established fraternal links with many schools around the world. They meet at Round Square conferences.

Hahn was loaded with honours. He was made a Commander of the British Empire. He was given the cross of merit of the Federal Republic of Germany.

In the early 1970s Gordonstoun admitted girls.

Dr Hahn retired in 1953. Except he did not. He returned to Salem and ran a house but taught no lessons.He jogged into his 80s! He died in 1974. He had never married.

Dr Hahn was fondly remembered by his pupils and colleagues alike.

Gordonsount is known as ”Stoun’’ to its pupils. Kurt Hahn is the subject of a number of biographies.  A school in the United States is now named in his honour.

LADY Margaret Bryan – Governess to Queen Elizabeth I.

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Lady Margaret Bryan was born in England. Her year of birth was approximately 1468. She came from an aristocratic family. Her brother was Lord Bourchier. She married Sir Thomas Bryan.

When Lord Bourchier died without sons his sister inherited his estates and moveables. This made her a woman of very considerable means.

Lady Bryan’s husband died when she was in her 40s. As a widow she was able to devoted more of her time to the king’s service.

Lady Margaret was the half-sister of Anne Boleyn’s mother.

Henry VIII had a son with his mistress Bessie Blount. This boy was name Henry FitzRoy. Fitz indicated his unwed birth. Roy is derived from ‘roi’ the French for king. Although no one contemplated Henry FitzRoy inheriting the Crown he was still a notable person. Lady Margaret was his governess when he was little.

From 1525 Lady Bryan was governess to Mary Tudor: the eldest daughter of Henry VIII. Lady Margaret was made a baroness as a reward. She did a superb job and the king was deeply satisfied with her. She was highly capable and managed to curry favour with the right people.

In 1533 Henry VIII declared that Mary Tudor was born outside of wedlock. His marriage to Catherine of Aragon was annulled. Mary Tudor was enraged. Her father told her to ”lay aside the name and dignity of princess.”

She refused to accept this and insisted that she was the king’s lawful daughter and heir. Lady Margaret had to manage the teenagers moods and fury. Mary Tudor felt rejected and humiliated. She bore herself with a dignity and defiance than inspired admiration even in her enemies.

At the age of 65 she became lady mistress to the baby Elizabeth. In those times the word ‘mistress’ denoted a woman with authority and not a paramour.

When Elizabeth was three months old she was taken away from her mother. Anne Boleyn had breastfed her baby for the first few weeks and was keen to continue. Henry VIII would not hear of this breach of protocol. The child was put into the care of a wet nurse. The woman really in charge was Lady Bryan. She was not the matronly battleaxe that some might fear. Elizabeth was taken to another royal residence in December 1533. Elizabeth spent most of her time at Hatfield House in Hertfordshire.

Anne Boleyn wrote to Lady Bryan very frequently with precise instructions for the child’s upbringing. Lady Bryan carried out her duties sedulously. Anne Boleyn sent her daughter the finest of clothes. The baby was dressed as a tiny adult. This was the way at the time. They made no allowances for children’s need to move more. About 40 pounds a month was spent on garments for Elizabeth. This approximates to 13 000 pounds today! Anne Boleyn seemed to be impelled to confirm her daughter’s legitimacy by making sure always appeared as regal as possible.

When Elizabeth was sent to live at Hatfield House this was also the residence of her half-sibling with Mary Tudor. The 17 year old Mary Tudor naturally resented her baby half-sister. Elizabeth had briefly replaced Mary Tudor in their father’s affections. Elizabeth’s mother Anne Boleyn had brought huge anguish to Mary Tudor and her mother Catherine of Aragon. Although Elizabeth spent most of the time at Hatfield House they sometimes moved to Greenwich Palace. Greenwich is now considered part of London. In those days it was a small port several miles from London.

Around this time Lady Bryan married for a second time. She wed David Soche. She was well past childbearing age so there was no chance that she was going to have a baby of her own to distract her from her job.

Anne Boleyn’s voluminous instructions also laid stess on the need to degrade Mary Tudor. Anne Boleyn emphasised that Mary Tudor was a bastard and had no right to inherit the Crown nor any right to style herself princess. Anne Boleyn’s volatile temperament was notorious. It would be foolish to provoke her. Lady Bryan had to walk a tightrope. She had to keep her mistress Anne Boleyn content because she was the queen. On the other hand it felt deeply wrong to insult Mary Tudor. It was plain that public sympathy was very much on Mary Tudor’s side. Too much aggravation in the family would make for a poisonous atmosphere.

Anne Boleyn’s spitefulness and pettiness did her no credit. She had enough enemies to begin with. She boasted how she would have Mary Tudor serving her as a maid. Her vindictiveness merely earned her more enmity. Anne Boleyn’s outbursts of furious shrieking made her deeply unpopular. Perhaps Lady Bryan was canny enough to see that Anne Boleyn’s haughtiness and mean spiritedness was setting her up for a dramatic fall. That was why it would have been unwise for Lady Bryan to carry out her order to humiliate Mary Tudor with too much zeal.

Lady Bryan’s son was Sir Francis Bryan. He spent much time at court. He knew a youngish woman from an aristocratic Wiltshire family named Jane Seymour. It was possibly due to Sir Francis that Jane Seymour came to the attention of Henry VIII. Henry VIII was infatuated with Jane Seymour. There is little doubt that Sir Francis Bryan kept his mother Lady Margaret Bryan informed of developments. The more the king fell for Jane Seymour’s feminine wiles the weaker Anne Boleyn’s situation became. That was why it would not do to be too closely associated with Anne Boleyn and her cruel treatment of Mary Tudor. Jane Seymour was canny enough to coquette with Henry VIII but she would not yield to her maidenhood. She parried his amorous advances with protestations of maidenly virtue.

Lady Bryan was also a regular correspondent of Lord Chancellor Thomas Cromwell. The lord chancellor was the king’s most important minister. Thomas Cromwell was no friend of the Boleyn family. Lady Bryan may well have been in the know about Anne Boleyn’s coming fall from grace.

Lady Bryan believed in expediency. She encouraged Mary Tudor to be kind to her half-sister. It was not the child’s fault. She tried to persuade Mary Tudor to accept her new diminished status. Mary Tudor was stubborn and held out for a long time. She eventually gave in and appeared to agree that she was downgraded. Her submissiveness caused her father to look more generously on her.

Lady Bryan had to supervise Elizabeth been weaned and put ont dry food. She of course received many very detailed orders from Anne Boleyn about how to do this. Lady Bryan had brought up her own children, grandchildren and royal children. She had vastly more experienced that Anne Boleyn.

When Elizabeth was two years and eight months old disaster struck. Her mother was accused of adultery and witchcraft. For a queen consort to commit adultery was high treason. It was also high treason for a man to have carnal knowledge of a woman of the royal family outside of marriage. The charges were very likely false. Nevertheless, three men were tortured into confessing to committing adultery with Anne Boleyn. The whole affair was probably cooked up by the scheming lord chancellor: Thomas Cromwell. He was a foe of the Boleyn family. Anne Boleyn and her supposed paramours were all put to death. At a stroke he removed Anne Boleyn, George Boleyn and Henry Norris who was Cromwell’s main political rival. There was also a musician called Mark Smeaton with whom Anne Boleyn had probably no more than flirted.

Elizabeth was suddenly downgraded to an illegitimate child. Her mother was declared to be an adultress and a sorceress. Her marriage to Henry VIII was annulled. Some of the Boleyn’s foes people suggested that Elizabeth bore a striking resemblance to her mother’s putative lover Mark Smeaton. In fact that is nonsense. Every unbiased observer noted that the similiarity between Elizabeth and Henry VIII was unmistakable.

This could all be a traumatising experience for a child. Fortunately, Elizabeth was so tiny that she can scarcely have been conscious of the gravity of the situation. She had seldom seen her mother anyway. It was very common for children to be orphaned then because life expectancy was so low. Many women died in childbirth. Therefore Elizabeth may not have been as severely psychologically damaged as we might imagine.

Anne Boleyn had gone to her death with fortitude and protesting her innocence with her very last breath. On the scaffold far from fulminate against her hypocritical, adulterous, vain and murderous husband she had praised him as the kindest king ever! No doubt Anne realised that she had better say something flattering about the man who had ordered her death. Otherwise her daughter Elizabeth would suffer.

As soon as her mother was killed Elizabeth was moved to smaller and less comfortable rooms. She was no longer a princess but a lady. Her clothing allowance was immediately stopped. Within a few weeks Lady Bryan was writing to Lord Chancellor Cromwell insisting that more clothes be sent for Lady Elizabeth. ”I beg you to be good to her and hers that she may have raiment.” The letter went on, ” for she has neither gown, nor kirtle nor petticoat. ”

In fact Lady Elizabeth had received a huge consignment of clothes just before her mother was accused of adultery. It is probable that Lady Bryan was overstating her ward’s lack of raiment to ensure that her complaint was taken seriously.

Shortly after Anne Boleyn’s execution. Lady Bryan approached the king with Elizabeth in her arms and asked if he wished to see his daughter. They king scoffed angrily and doubted that the child was his.

Lady Bryan took Elizabeth to Hatfield. She did her level best to shield the child from the horror that had unfolded. Some of those who had previously harboured a quiet loyalty for Mary Tudor were now only too glad to show their scorn for Elizabeth. As Anne Boleyn had been executed Mary Tudor was back in the king’s good graces. Mary Tudor’s mother had died of natural causes a few months earlier which only gained her even more sympathy.

Lady Bryan described Elizabeth as a ”succourless and redeless creature”. (Succour is help). Lady Bryan had been used to receiving very detailed instructions from Anne Boleyn. With Anne Boleyn dead Lady Bryan had a great deal more autonomy. She did not find this entirely to her liking.

Lady Bryan did not know Elizabeth’s exact status. She wrote indignantly to Thomas Cromwell asking for clarification, ” Now Lady Elizabeth is put from that degree she was in to what degree she is in now I know not but by hearsay ”

Sir John Shelton was in charge of Hatfield House. He insisted that Lady Elizabeth dine at the high table as though her status had not been lowered. Lady Bryan had received instructions that Elizabeth had to dine on a less exalted table. She complained that Shelton was disobeying these orders. ”Mr Shelton would have my Lady Elizabeth dine every evening at board of estate. It is not meet [appropriate] for a child of this age.” The real objection was not her age but her illegitimate status. Lady Bryan paid close attention to rank. The order of precedence was everything at court. It was only by being pedantic about such things that she gained favour at court.

Mr was such a high title that it was acceptable to call a knight ‘mister’. Ordinary men did not have the dignity of being called ‘mister.’ Lady Bryan found it very difficult to get along with Shelton. This appears to have been his fault and not hers.

Lady Bryan saw fit to bother the most important man in government with news of Elizabeth’s teeth. ”My lady has great pain in her teeth which come very slowly.” She showed her motherly concern with this sentence.

Lady Margaret Bryan commented on Elizabeth’s development saying she was ”as toward a child of gentle conditions as ever I knew in my life.” ‘Toward’ in those days meant advanced. She expressed a hope that Elizabeth be allowed to be seen on public occasions. The king was at that stage minded to hide Elizabeth as a reminder of the shameful Anne Boleyn.

Thomas Cromwell had much bigger fish to fry. However, Lady Bryan was so formidable that he felt compelled to answer her and take her complaints seriously.

One historian, Agnes Strickland, summarised it as:

”Much of the future greatness of Elizabeth may reasonably be attributed to the judicious training of her sensible and conscientious her governess.”

Eleven days after Anne Boleyn’s decapitation Henry VIII was feeling in the romantic mood! He wed Jane Seymour.

In 1537 Jane Seymour was delivered of a bonny baby boy: Edward VI. Almighty God chose to call the queen to his mercy. She died 12 days after giving birth.

Lady Bryan was made governess of the infant Edward VI. This was a step up because boys were considered much more valuable than girls. Furthermore, Edward VI was undoubtly legitimate whereas in 1536 Elizabeth was declared to have been born to an unwed mother.The infant Edward VI came to live with his sisters. Lady Bryan was in charge of all three of the king’s offspring. Although she clearly had a soft spot for the girls it was made very clear to her that her main responsibility was Edward. He was far more important to the king than both his daughters put together.

Lady Bryan took satisfaction in Edward VI’s luxurious lifestyle, ”His grace was full of pretty toys as ever I saw a child in my life”, wrote Lady Bryan to Thomas Cromwell. By ‘full’ she means he had plenty of them.

When Edward VI was two years old Lady Margaret wrote to Cromwell reporting on the prince’s every little achievement. There is no mistaking the grandmotherly delight in this missive,”The minstrels played and his grace danced and played so wantonly as he could not sit still.”

Lady Margaret still gave Elizabeth presents many of them made by her own hand.

In 1537 the Sheltons were removed from Hatfield. It was relief for Lady Margaret Bryan who has always found Sir John Shelton hard to get on with. It was also a vindication of her. She was superb at her job and he was not. It was a rare victory for a woman over a man.

Lady Bryan taught Mary Tudor and Elizabeth to be good to their brother. They could so easily have resented him for replacing them in their fathers affections. However, they doted on the child.

After a few years Edward VI was moved away to a grander household. Lady Bryan moved with him. He was her sole charge. Elizabeth and Mary Tudor then lived apart. Mary Tudor was well into her 20s and did not need a governess any longer.

Lady Bryan began education with these children. They learnt the rudiments from her. Later on their education was provided by erudite men. It was their general development that was her field.

It appears that she retired in 1452. Her pension was 20 pounds per annum which was handsome indeed.

Lady Bryan served Edward VI so long as her health allowed. She died in about 1552.

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CONCLUSIONS

Lady Bryan brought up three monarchs. By all accounts she was brilliant at her job. She was a disciplinarian who was also warm and reasonable. Her responsibilities were very serious indeed. She also had to navigate Tudor politics. Her wards were highly educated, worldly and courtly.

The three monarchs all turned out to be fairly successful in their way. Mary Tudor succeeded in restoring Catholicism though at the cost of her popularity. For Mary Tudor is was Catholicism that mattered so this was a price worth paying.

MR COLOUR

 

[This is about Mr Edward Green. For ‘Colour’ read

‘Greene]

 

He was born in 1938. His father was so aghast at the slaughter of the First World War that he became a pacifist. He also joined the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) at that time. Colour’s mother was a conventional Anglican. Ben Colour had been to Russian with the Quakers’ Famine Relief Mission. He joined the Labour Party and even served as secretary to the Labour Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald.

In the Second World War colour’s father became was an outspoken opponent of military action. His principle stance alienated many of his dearest friends. Mrs Colour said it was tremendous because the Colours knew who their real friends were. Mr Ben Colour was even gaoled for two years for his anti war activism.

Colour moved to Scotland in 1942. He was soon enrolled in a prep school called Craigflower. It was whilst in North Britain that Colour became interested in presbyterian church governance. He was later to form the view that the Reformation in Scotland had been admirable since it originated in the broad mass of the populace and was enacted for lofty motives. He contrasted that with the English Reformation where the Crown imposed the Reformation on an unwilling majority and did so for the narrowest  and ignoblest of personal reasons.

Colour went to Eton at the age of 13. The school was of course Church of England. It came to the time when as an Etonian it was suggested that Colour should be confirmed. Colour told his housemaster that he would not be going forward for confirmation since he was a Presbyterian. His housemaster was very surprised and mildly disapproved. Most boys at Eton were Anglicans. There were a few other Protestants, some Catholics and Jews.

Colour was a self-confessed eccentric. Eton in the 1950s was a surprisingly broad-minded place.

Religious debate was heated in the Colour household. His elder sisters became Catholics.

Colour did his National Service. He enlisted in the Royal Navy. This was a highly unusual choice for an Old Etonian. He greatly enjoyed his three years in the senior service.

He then went up to Oxford. He attended Wadham. Again this was an uncommon choice for a boy from Eton. However, his subject was more predictable: Classics.

Wadham was then run by the legendary Maurice Bowra.

Colour applied to the Colonial Office. He was going to be a district commissioner in the New Hebrides. In the end that did not transpire.  Colonialism’s loss was education’s gain.

Colour finished his degree and was offered a position tutoring the son of a belted earl. This peer had a huge estate in North Britain. Colour travelled with his pupil between the United Kingdom and Sweden.

After a few years as a private tutoRr he became a schoolmaster. He taught at Magdalen College School. He was asked to do some private tutoring on the side. Therefore he started a little extra tutoring. He was asked to provide tutors for subjects he could not teach. He sourced such tutors.

Over time his tutoring business grew and grew. It came to pass that he was unable to discharge his duties to the school. He decided to resign from MCS and run his tutoring business fulltime. He had fallen into this career.

He set up the tutorial college that bears his name. The college was the first of its kind. It has many imitators but no equals. Its officeholders have antiquarian titles such as usher and same. Pupils pay bills called battels. These battels were calculated in the most wonderfully anachronistic units – guineas. A guinea was one pound and one shilling, i.e. GBP 1.05. The college seemed to founded on the premise that being old fashioned was a virtue.

He had handmade paper brochures. There were weekly tea parties – symbolic of the old world decency that pervaded the college.

Colour’s College was in its heyday in the 80s and 90s. In the Noughties Mr Colour was reaching retirement age. He was ably assisted by his registrar Nick.

Colour’s achieved outstanding results. This is not simply a matter of many A* s. The college took some very bright pupils, plenty of average ones and more than a few pupils with academic difficulties. For some pupils an E grade was a major accomplishment. Colour would take pupils of all levels of aptitude and do the best to enable that pupil to achieve the maximum that he or she could.

Mr Colour was unique. His tranquil demeanour and unfailing mannerliness won him many admirers. He is so devoted to his college that his is why he is a lifelong bachelor.

Colour College experienced a fillip in the 70s. Many pupils were expelled for taking drugs. Some boys had been booted out of public school for such trifling offences as growing their hair. Schools went mixed. This led to girls and boys getting into compromising positions. Some were kicked out of school for that. Colour took such pupils. Two-thirds of his pupils were boys. This is partly because they were more likely to be excluded from school. However, by no means all pupils there were expellees. Some chose to leave school because they preferred to enroll at Colour’s. Colour’s took an increasing number of pupils from overseas such as Russia. The college was unique and inimitable.

Mr Colour worships in the Free Church of Scotland. The nearest church is in London. He has no petty denominational prejudice. He worships in Oxford Cathedral. He is a strict sabbatarian and will  not answer the phone on Sunday. Indeed he is an adherent of the Lord’s Day Observance Society. He says grace before meals. His moral rectitude does not preclude enjoying wine as Our Saviour did.

To step into Colour’s abode is to step back in time. The decor and layout is decidedly old world. The ambience is unashamedly 19th century. It is like a time capsule of traditional decency. He lives in a multi storey flat on Pembroke Street. It is adorned with judiciously chosen and carefully arranged Victorian bric a brac. Portraits of Protestant divines grace the walls

MARGARETTA EAGAR. GOVERNESS to the Romanovs.

Margaretta is known for having been governess to the last Tsar’s daughters. These were Tatiana, Olga, Anastasia and Maria. She published a book entitled Six Years at the Russian Court.

She was born in Ireland. She came from the city of Limerick.

Margaretta was a Protestant which made her a minority in Ireland and a tiny minority in Limerick. She was one of ten children. She spent some time in Belfast and qualified as a nurse. She ran an orphanage for a while.

She was recruited specifically to be a governess to the Grand Duchesses. She courageously moved to Russia despite never having been there and speaking not a phonem of Russian. Miss Eagar’s first impression of Russia was positive,

”I may say here that the Russians are sympathetic and kind to a degree, and they are always willing to help a stranger in any way in their power.”

She worked as a governess to the Imperial Family from 1898. At 35 Margaretta Eagar was considered middle aged. She had ample relevant experience. She was unmarried and at the age of 35 it was assumed that she would always remain unmarried. Being a spinster was a prerequisite of the position.

The Tsar’s four daughters picked up a Hibernian lilt from their Irish governess. Protestants were more acceptable than Catholics in Russia. This is because the Orthodox Church and the Roman Catholic Church had an frosty relationship since the schism of 1054. The Russian imperial family sometimes wed Protestants but they never wed Catholics.  As Margaretta Eagar noted some Orthodox Christians even attended Protestant worship sometimes:

” Many Russian people go on Easter Sunday to the English and Lutheran churches. ”

She lived at Susvina Dacha which was 4 or 5 miles from the Peterhof Palace. She spoke French which she found useful in communicating with many officials. French was the principal foreign language in Russia at the time.

Miss Eagar’s role was childcare more than education at that stage. Their Imperial Highnesses were all very little. However, she spoke English to them which they knew from their parents. She also did some basic literacy with them. Looking at Margaretta Eagar’s own writing there is no doubt that she was a highly intelligent woman. University education was scarcely available in Ireland for women. Even then it was effectively impossible for all but the wealthiest girls to access tertiary education.

Nikolai II has gone down in History as uncaring towards his subjects who suffered horrifically under his misrule. Miss Eagar had a different take on him. She found him considerate towards the lowliest of his subjects:

”When an Imperial train stops at a station, a deputation of the principal persons, headed by one called the Stavosta or Elder, presents the Emperor with bread and salt. Shortly after the accession of Nicholas II., he found that the poorer villages and communities were unable to afford the expense of the gold plate, and yet could not bear to be outdone by the richer villages. He therefore issued a decree that henceforth bread and salt should be presented only on wooden or china dishes. This is very characteristic of his thought for his poorer subjects.”

Miss Eagar was a hit with the princesses. She writes with blatant fondness about her former pupils.  It is hard to remember that these people we see in sepia tinted photographs and who were so adulated were real people with foibles, fun and weaknesses. In her colourful prose the Grand Duchesses come alive as the little girls they really were:

”In the picture gallery here is the finest collection of Rembrandts extant. One of these represents the visit of the Trinity to Abraham. I was one day looking at it, trying to make out what it meant, when the little Grand Duchess Olga ran up to me, and, putting her hand in mine, asked me what I was looking at. I told her ; she then looked at it earnestly, and suddenly burst out laughing, exclaimed : ” Oh ! What a very funny picture a man holding a leg of mutton in his hand, and carving it with a knife, and a bird sitting at the table.” The bird, needless to say, was one of the angels.”

The daughters of the Tsar behaved badly sometimes like other children. It was their governess’s duty to deal with this. She recalled some squabbling between them:

” Once there was a cinematograph exhibition for the children and some friends. One picture showed two little girls playing in a garden, each with a table before her covered with toys. Suddenly the bigger girl snatched a toy from the little one who, how- ever, held on to it and refused to give it up. Foiled in her attempts, the elder seized a spoon and pounded the little one with it, who quickly relinquished the toy and began to cry. Tatiana wept to see the poor little one so ill-treated, but Olga was very quiet. After the exhibition was over she said, ” I can’t think that we saw the whole of that picture.”

Do not imagine that royalty are perfect. She recalled that the girls sometimes hit each other. Margaretta was fondest of Tatiana whom she found to be the most intellectually inquisitive. The governess read her charges many stories such asAlice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass. Both of these tales are by the Oxford Maths don Lewis Carroll (real name: Charles Lutwidge Dodgson).

Margaretta came to speak Russian. She got along well with her Russian colleagues. She was much older than most of them and they came to her for advice.

”  The maids in the nursery used always to tell me if any man paid them attentions, More About the Children. 267 and just for all the world like an anxious mother, I used to make enquiries about his character, temper, position in life, and whether the would-be suitor could give his wife a home of her own  ”

She recalled that the princesses were very solicitous towards even their maids. When a maid left to get married they had a farewell party for her.

”         The other girls gave a little party to celebrate her leaving us, and the young man was amongst the guests. When the girl heard that he had arrived her grief broke forth again. She realised that the time of parting had come, and the children cried most bitterly. Little Tatiana Nicolaivna took a sheet of paper and a pencil, and wrote with great difficulty a letter which I trans- late : ” Vladislav, Be good with Tegla. Tatiana.” She placed this letter in an envelope and printed in large letters on the envelope, Vladislav, and sent it to him by the housemaid. ”

Margaretta Eagar accompanied the Imperial Household on voyages across the Baltic Sea to Denmark. Nikolai II’s mother was a Danish princess. She also went with them on the Imperial Train on journeys to Russian Poland. She also travelled with them to Yalta and cruised in the Black Sea with them. In Crimea she had the chance to visit some of the cemeteries that contained the mortal remains of British soldiers who had died in the Crimean War only 50 years before. Not a few of these Britishers were Irishmen.

Miss Eagar had an inquiring mind. She was conscious of complexity. She wrote that she was very aware of the ethno-religious diversity of the Russian Empire. She commented on the different habits of Tatars who were Muslims. Back then a lot of ethnic minority people in Russia did not speak Russian. Their religious customs made a huge difference at the time. She heard the anti-Semitic attitudes of the Romanovs to which she did not seem to object even privately.

Miss Eagar had the opportunity to observe some of the mightiest men in the world up close. Here is what she had to say about a remarkably cordial meeting between the Tsar and Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany:

” On our way to Poland we paid a visit to Potsdam, to the German Emperor and Empress. On arriving we found the troops drawn up in a line, and the Emperor himself met us at the station. The band played the Russian National Anthem, and the two Emperors walked along and inspected the regiments. The Emperor of Russia shook hands with the officers and congratulated them. He and the Empress then went off to lunch at the palace, but we stayed in the train till after lunch, when a carriage arrived and took us up to the palace. The German Emperor is very like his portraits  ”

She also got to meet an in-law of the Romanovs: King Edward VII of the United Kingdom. The Tsarina Alexandra was a granddaughter of Queen Victoria and therefore a first cousin of Edward VII. Margaretta Eagar was understandably timid about meeting her sovereign. Contrary to his uncaring public image she found her king to be benevolent:

”  The King frequently spoke to me, too, and called me ” My Irish subject.” He has very winning manners and great tact. He has a marvellous memory. This year he sent me, in memory of the birth of the Czarovitch, a brooch, in green enamel, because I am Irish. They say he never forgets any- thing, and I know he never forgets to be kind. ”

Margaretta was allowed occasional holidays back to Ireland. She then went to Kilkee, Co Clare which is a seaside resort.

Relations between the Hohenzollerns were very warm. Because of the First World War it is hard to remember just how well royal houses got on beforehand.

” The Crown Prince of Germany paid us a visit, and became very intimate with his little cousins.”

Do not misunderstand the word ‘intimate’ here. It is not hinting at any improper behaviour.

Though the overthrow the Romanovs was some years off Miss Eagar wrote of the increasing frequency of revolutionary violence. Even she made some criticisms of the way the Tsar governed. Naturally she sympathised with the family she worked for an denounced revolutionaries as demons.

She left the imperial employ in the summer of 1904. She stated that this was for personal reasons. It could be that she was dismissed because she was British. All Irish people were British citizens at the time since the whole of Ireland was a portion of the UK at the time.  In 1904 the Russo-Japanese War began. The United Kingdom openly sympathised with Japan. This made it impolitic for the Romanovs to employ a woman of that nationality.

She did not leave the Romanovs immediately after the outbreak of this war. It was a few months later. She recalled that the Romanovs were actuated by genuine patriotism and were prepared to make a few sacrifices themselves. Despite their extremely exalted statues they were not too grand to do war work:

”            After the war broke out the children, even little Anastasie, worked at frame knitting. They made scarves for the soldiers, and Olga and Tatiana crocheted caps indefatigably.” 

Yet the children were not above the vindictive feelings that war inspires:

”  It was very sad to me to witness the wrathful vindictive spirit that the war raised in my little charges. One of the illustrated papers had a picture of the baby children of the Crown Prince of Japan. Marie and Anastasie came running across to see the picture, and wanted to know who those queer little children were. I told them, and with a look of hatred coming into her sweet little face Marie slapped the picture with her open hand. ” Horrid little people,” said she ; ” they came and destroyed our poor ships and drowned our sailors.”  ”

 

Despite the unhappy circumstances of Miss Eagar’s departure the Romanovs faithfully paid her her pension. She corresponded with her girls for many years. There is no doubt about the genuine affection between them. Had the war not intervened she probably would have lasted many more years with them. She was an excellent governess for several reasons. Margaretta was respectable and smartly dressed. She knew how to behave. She was deferential and mannerly. Miss Eagar was able to take charge of these children despite their lofty rank. She handled bad behaviour with aplomb. A natural authority enabled her to win the respect of her wards. She was academically able and she could entertain children.  It helped that she was a nurse and solicitous for their health. Margaretta maintained warm and constructive relation with the Russian nannies and other servants. They perceived her as an ally and not an enemy. This is partly down to her tact and emotional intelligence.

Perhaps personal reasons did play a role in Miss Eagar leaving the Romanovs. She missed Ireland and frequently mentioned her native land in her book.

She published Six Years at the Russian Court.  This remarkable book is lively and closely observed. It is a superb window on the family life of the Romanovs. It is set before the haemophilia of Tsarevich Alexei was known. He was born only weeks before Margaretta left Russia. Therefore these were fairly carefree years for the family. They were not haunted by the fear of illness, death and revolution. This memoir is filled with charming apercus. She gives a whistle stop tour through Russian History and she describes the lifestyles of all levels of society. She treats her readers to her judgment on different members of the Romanov family. She had this to say about the Dowager Empress (mother of Nikolai II).

”  The Dowager Empress is a very attractive person. She has the full rich voice, and the excessive tact which belong to the Danish family, as well as their youthful looks. ”

The Tsarina approved of the idea of publishing Six Years at the Russian Court which came out in 1906. She said it was necessary to rebut many of the calumnies printed about the Romanovs. Whether she Tsarina saw the manuscript is doubtful. Presumably she would not have liked so much information about their private life being revealed. The book is almost entirely flattering but it mentions some shortcomings. Eagar defended her erstwhile employers on many points. She even said the government was not all responsible for the Kishniev Pogroms.

Maragretta Eagar never married.She moved to London and ran a boarding house their in Holland Park. Her business was not a success and she died relatively poor.

SIR WILLIAM JONES.

EARLY LIFE

Jones was born at London in 1746. His father hailed from Wales. William Jones grew up bilingual in Welsh and English. He may be regarded as belonging to both Wales and England.

William Jones father was a mathematician of great repute. He invented the usage of Pi to denote 3.14.  Jones’ father died when the boy was three. Jones was raised by his mother. For a bourgeois family they lived in straitened circumstances.

William Jones enrolled in Harrow School at the age of 7. These days Harrow does not admit boys until they have attained the age of 13. 7 was young even by the standards of the 18th century to start at Harrow.

Jones excelled academically. He found the curriculum that consisted of Mathematics, Latin, Ancient Greek and Hebrew to be far too unchallenging. The headmaster remarked that Jones knew more Greek than he did himself. He decided to teach himself a few languages. With the aid of textbooks he soon mastered Persian. He then proceeded to learn Arabic. Jones also taught himself Chinese. He was to attain absolute fluency in Chinese despite never going to China. He learnt more and more tongues – ancient and modern – just for fun. He was a phenomenal autodidact. There was no doubt that he was a prodigy. He wished to attend university but did not have sufficient means. His outstanding intellectual prowess won him a scholarship.

Jones was very taken by the Roman author Cicero. Cicero taught that one should never waste a minute. Jones was convinced by this dictum and used every moment for self-improvement. He was forever studying and writing. This accounts for his compendious writing.

Harrow School educated some boys for free who were from the parish of Harrow. Other pupils were known as ‘foreigners’ in that they came from outside that parish. The great majority of pupils were ‘foreigners’ in that sense and Jones was among them. Almost all the so-called foreigners paid fees. Jones was one of the very few foreigners who was educated gratis. This was owing to his prodigious intellectual gifts. William Jones was a prodigy. He certainly had an outstanding inherent aptitude his jaw dropping attainments required very strenuous effort. He was known to be extremely industrious. He seemed to vindicate the 10,000 hours theory. That is that a person only achieves excellence in something by fully concentrating on studying it for at least 10 000 hours.

Harrow School was unruly like most British public schools at the time. The boys played their own rough sports. This included Harrow Football. Football has not been codified nationally and each school played its own version of the game. There was plenty of bullying. The school was Anglican and the boys were required to attend worship in the Church of England. This did not make them all more moral. Many of them skipped lessons to ride to the hounds. Masters were constantly struggling to get boys out of taverns where the schoolboys were betting on cockfights and getting themselves stocious drunk.

At the age of 17 Jones published a poem entitled Caissa on chess. Here are the first few lines:

Of armies on the chequer’d field array’d,
And guiltless war in pleasing form display’d;
When two bold kings contend with vain alarms,
In ivory this, and that in ebon arms;
Sing, sportive maids, that haunt the sacred hill
Of Pindus, and the fam’d Pierian rill.

 

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OXFORD

 

William Jones went up to Oxford University. He was admitted to what is widely believed to be the most ancient college: University College. Legend had it that Univ (as University College is known) was founded by King Alfred the Great in 871. Univ now acknowledges that this claim is specious. The truth is that Univ was founded by William of Durham in 1249. Jones signed the college register on 16 March 1764. He was then aged 17. These days undergraduates always begin in October. In the 18th century they could join in any term. A Bachelor’s degree did not necessarily take three years. It could take slightly less for an exceptionally hardworking undergraduate and it often took a little longer than three years.

Jones had the misfortune to attend Oxford when the university was at its lowest ebb. Although Oxford was the only university in England besides Cambridge its reputation internationally was not good. There were some very bright and studious boys at Oxford. The best of the dons worked sedulously and published some magnificent tomes. However, more than a few undergraduates were admitted simply because they could pay the fee. There were no academic admissions criteria as such. The undergraduates were expected to be able to write Latin and Ancient Greek competently. All university ceremonies were conducted entirely in Latin. In order to matriculate at the university people had to swear an oath that they accepted the king as head of the Church of England. Roman Catholics could not do this in good conscience and so were effectively disbarred from the university. The Scots universities also discriminated against Catholics but those universities at least had a richly deserved reputation for intellectual achievement at the time.

Although the 1760s was perhaps the most inglorious chapter in Oxford’s history William Jones was lucky to be a member of one of the few colleges that bucked the trend. The man who had just been elected Master of Univ was Nathan Wetherell. Wetherell was a forward looking man who insisted on keeping academic standard rigorous. He would tolerate none of the lassitude and philistinism that blighted other colleges.

On 31 October 1764 Jones was awarded the Bennet scholarship. He did not take part in other college activities. He seems to have studies sedulously so much that he had no time for recreation.

All undergraduates lived in their college throughout their time at the university. They were required to attend chapel every morning. This was Anglican worship and even those who belonged to other Protestant denominations such as Baptists or Church of Scotland had to attend Anglican services. The wealthier boys lived a charmed life. The affluent tended not to show up to lectures and only attended tutorials because they were sent down (expelled) if they did not. These rich undergraduates often spent their days riding to the hounds, gambling and whoring. Opium had lately been introduced as a recreational drug. It was entirely legal to sell it as a narcotic. A few undergraduates indulged in this fashionable vice.

The impecunious undergraduates often worked as servitors. A servitor acted as a servant to a rich boy. William Smithson (founder of the Smithsonian Museum) was one such undergraduate who was compelled to work as a servitor at this time.

Undergraduates had to wear subfusc for all university activities. This meant a white shirt, bowtie and dark suit with a gown. Despite this subfusc in the 18th century was not quite what it is today. These activities where they wore subfusc included lectures and meals (if they chose to attend) as well as compulsory occasions which meant chapel and tutorials. At dinner undergraduates had to wear a smart coat, a white shirt, a cravat, silk stockings and a wig or powdered hair.

Some undergraduates played sports in their free time. Cricket, football, real tennis, boxing, wrestling and rowing were among these. There was no compulsion to join in any sport.

Dons would hear essays read aloud at classes. Several undergraduates would be at a class. After the essay or written translation had been read the don would ask the other undergraduates to critique what they had heard. This is called a dialectic. Two opposing views were expressed on the same set of facts. The Socratic method was often used. A don would chair the discussion and encourage the youth who had read an essay to defend his work. Tutorials took place a couple of times a week. A don would set his undergraduates essays for each tutorial as well as issuing reading lists. Because so much of the curriculum consisted of construing ancient languages into English a don would ask one undergraduate to translate the text aloud. After a few lines of a poem or a page of prose he would then ask another undergraduate to take over. The boys had to stay on their toes because they never knew exactly when the don would ask another one of them to take over the construction of the text from Latin or Greek into English.

Undergraduates had much latitude in what they studied. All boys at Oxford had to do some Latin and Greek. No one had a claim to being educated unless he could hold his own in his languages. An undergraduate could dip into Modern Languages such as French, Italian, German and Arabic. History was studied but this was mainly Ancient History studied through the Classical Languages. The same went for Philosophy. Theology was also available. Sciences and Mathematics existed but were not popular. Medicine and Law only existed as postgraduate degrees. Art and Music did not exist as university subjects.

Examinations were oral and conducted in Latin. After three years or so an undergraduate would be quizzed by dons on his studies.

Degrees were unclassified. That is to say that an undergraduate either passed or failed. There was no system whereby an undergraduate was awarded a First class degree, a Second class degree, a Third class degree and so on. Degree classification was only introduced in the early 19th century.

Aristocratic undergraduates often lounged around Oxford for a year or two. They commonly went down without graduating. They had acquired a little polish and felt no need to pick up a degree.

Jones met a Syrian in London named Mirza. William Jones he brought this man to Oxford at his own expense. He used this man to help him learn Arabic. There was already a Professorship of Arabic at Oxford but Jones does not appear to have taken any instruction from an Oxford don in the subject. Edward Gibbon was among those who dipped into Arabic whilst at Oxford.

William Jones was notable as one of the most brilliant undergraduates of his day. The obvious course for him would have been to seek a Fellowship. A fellowship meant being a Fellow of a college. The Fellows of a college are the governing body. The Fellows were mostly the dons but some of them performed other roles such as being bursar (in charge of the college’s money) and some held various administrative positions. A Fellowship was a very coveted position and often held for life.

If Jones was awarded a Fellowship then he would have been made with a decent income and a place to live. However, it seemed like it not to be for two reasons. Fellowships were usually only  open to those who were ordained in the Church of England. Jones was an Anglican like almost all of the middle and upper classes but he was not especially religious. Quite a few fellows were ordained priests not because they were religious minded but simply for the sake of their careers. Jones showed no inclination to become a clergyman. The Master of Univ, Wetherell, was broadminded and decided to engineer Jones’s election to the Fellowship anyway. The serving Fellows voted as to who would be allowed to become a Fellow.  Jones was not unique in becoming a Fellow while he was not a clergyman. William Scott was another Univ Fellow who had not been ordained.

Despite not being in holy orders he was awarded a Fellowship. It had been offered to him on 12 April 1766. This was a very remarkable accomplishment because he had not become a priest and even more astonishingly he was still an undergraduate! Such a thing is impossible now but at the time this accolade was very rare indeed for an undergraduate but was occasionally granted. The other reason it is extraordinary that he became a fellow is that fellowships were seldom awarded on merit. 18th century Britain was an extremely unequal society and nepotism was frank. Dons openly said that they granted Fellowships to a young man because he was a relative or as a payback for a favour. Jones came from a penurious family and had not relatives with any sway. Because he was one of the ablest Oxonians of his generation he was made a Fellow. Fellows were usually required to resign their Fellowships if they married. The stipend was to support bachelors and not families.

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AFTER OXFORD

Jones then secured a job as tutor to the seven year old George, Viscount Althorp. Lord Althorp was the eldest son of Earl Spencer. This was the dynasty that was to later include Princess Diana. As in Lord George Althorp was her ancestor. Viscount Althorp was being prepared to enroll at Harrow School. This choice of school was possibly influenced by Jones himself being an Old Harrovian.

Jones later tutored  Lady Georgiana Spencer. Lady Georgiana was the sister of Viscount Althorp. William Jones taught Lady Georgiana writing. She became the Duchess of Devonshire. She is featured in the film The Duchess where she is played by Keira Knightley. The Duchess of Devonshire was very self-possessed and had to negotiate a miserable marriage plagued by her melancholic husband’s affair with the duchess’ dearest friend. The Duchess of Devonshire’s affair with Hon Charles Grey did not make matters easier. Could it have been Jones’ introducing her to classical literature gave her some notion of how to live such a complex love life?

Fellows usually did some tutoring in their college. Jones never did this because he was too busy tutoring the children of Earl Spencer. Nor did Jones hold any offices at Univ. He regularly visited and stayed overnight. There were guest rooms to enable old members of the college to do this. He would use the Bodleian Library which was one of the very few places in the United Kingdom that houses works in Persian and the other languages he was studying.

Jones became known as an Orientalist. To some extent Oriental Studies  was founded as a subject in the UK because of the trail he had blazed. Jones was so renowned that the King of Denmark visited him. Denmark possessed some territory in India until the 1860s which why Indian Studies were of intense importance to the Danes. In his free time Jones translated texts from Persian to French. He did this for ‘Nader Shah’s History’ which was originally penned by Mirza Mehdi Khan Astarabadi. King Christian VII of Denmark had requested this because Indian Studies mattered to him on account of possessing Indian territory. Jones translated the poems of Hafez into French verse. It was ‘Histoire de Nader Chah’ which was a treatise on Oriental poetry.

In 1772 he published a work entitled, ”Poems consisting chiefly of translations from the Asiatic languages and two essays on the poetry of the Eastern nations and on the arts commonly called imitative”. It is a typical 18th century mouthful of a title. In his essay on Eastern poetry Jones gave a very contemporary view of the importance of the natural world to poetry, ‘Now it is certain that all poetry receives a very considerable ornament from the beauty of the natural images.’  In this same essay Jones expressed the unusual opinion that harshness and even ugliness have their place in poetic inspiration, ‘We must not believe that the Arabian poetry can please only by its description of beauty.    Since the gloomy and terrible objects which produce the sublime when they are aptly described are nowhere more common than in the desert and stony Arabia. Indeed we see nothing so frequently painted by the poets of these countries more commonly  painted as Wolves and forests, rocks and precipice and wildernesses.’ He speculated why Arabic poetry focussed so much on two regions – Yemen and Kashmir. Kashmir is not an Arabic speaking region but being part of the Muslim world it was known to Arab poets. Moreover, the educated minority in Kashmir sometimes wrote Arabic because most of them were Muslims so they needed to read Arabic in order to study the Holy Koran in its original version. Jones’ educated guess was that Yemen (Arabia Felix as Westerners called it) and Kashmir were places of exceptional sublimity. He waxed lyrical about their cool, calm air, flower laden verdant vales and aromatic plants.

At the age of 22 he temporarily gave up poesy. He turned his formidable intellect to law.

He valued oratory and translated the Ancient Greek jurist Asias’s work ”On Causes concerning the law of succession to property in Athens.”

Jones later went to London and read for the Bar. In those days there were no Bar exams as such. A youth who spent a couple of years at the bar doing odd jobs for barristers and eating dinners in the hall of his Inn of Court would be considered to have picked up a working knowledge of the law. He was a member of Middle Temple.  He was called to the Bar and quickly achieved renown.

Jones was appointed a puisne judge. Puisne is pronounced ‘puny’ and is a low ranking judge. He served on a circuit in his paternal Wales. In the Principality he was seen as standing for the common man against the wealthy and well connected. Perhaps this is owing to his own difficult start in life. He had been a shoo in to serve in the Welsh judiciary since Welsh was his mother tongue. In the 18th century not everyone in Wales spoke English. Jones often had to hear evidence in Welsh.

Sir William Jones was hugely respected as a scholar of jurisprudence. His work on bailments was celebrated.

Jones taught himself Persian and received only a few lessons in the language. In 1771 he published a book entitled ”Persian Grammar”. This book was so highly regarded that it became the standard work on the subject for a further century.

Since 1772 he was a member of the Royal Society. The Royal Society was for men of the most outstanding erudition. Most of them were scientists but some of them were learned in the Humanities or jurisprudence. Since 1773 he was a member of Samuel Johnson’s literary club. Dr Johnson had acquired fame for publishing the first English dictionary.

Jones was a man of advanced opinions. He might even be termed a radical. He joined the Society for Constitutional Information. This organisation did not simply collate and disseminate information about the functioning and misfunctioning of British Government. It also pressed the case for far going reform.

 

William Jones found himself in accord with the demands of American reformers in the early 1770s. He met Benjamin Franklin in Paris to see whether the aspirations of the Thirteen Colonies could be satisfied within the British Empire. Both men were keen to avoid bloodshed and neither was an extremist. If it did come to a fight not all American reformers were not sure that those who sought independence would win. If an independence movement was defeated then the cause of reform would be hugely set back both in America and the UK. Jones was a most acceptable to the Americans as an interlocutor because he was known to share their opinions. In the end it was impossible to find a peaceful solution. William Jones outspoken advocacy of American independence did not help his career. He was impolitic enough to publish a tract expressing his view that London ought to make major concessions to American opinion.  This was ”Principles in Government: a dialogue between a scholar and a peasant.” William Jones believed that most men ought to have some say in the government of their country.

Jones spoke Portuguese, English, Welsh, Spanish, Italian, French, German, Danish, Latin, Greek, Hebrew, Persian, Turkish and Arabic. He was eager to learn Indian languages.

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IN INDIA

Jones wanted to be appointed a judge of the Supreme Court of Judicature at Fort William in Calcutta. It was March 1783 when he was informed of his promotion. He was finally appointed to the senior bench at the age of 37. It was difficult to induce British judges to seek posts in India because the voyage was lengthy and dangerous. Moreover, the Indian climate and tropical diseases meant that Britishers seldom survived long in the Subcontinent. This is why the judges who sought to sit on the Indian bench were often second raters. It was staggering that a man of Jones’ talents was willing, nay, eager to serve in India.

He was a superb poet but published just one volume of his own verse. He translated poems from other language into French verse. Some have criticised his translations for being unfaithful to the original. He felt that ”Asian poetry can revitalise  European literature which has subsisted too long on the same images.” Jones did little to preserve the rhythm of rhyme scheme of the poems he rendered in French and English.

.

As Jones was about to leave the United Kingdom he realised that he had better settle his personal life. William Jones married Anna Maria Shipley. She was well got since her father was the Bishop of Llandaff. Llandaff is just outside Cardiff so the Welsh capital was within his see. Dr Jonathan Shipley was therefore the foremost churchman in Wales.

 

In 1783 the British Government finally accepted that the United States was independent. Jones known sympathy for American independence was no longer a barrier to promotion. In March 1783 he was knighted under the Fox-North Coalition. His knighthood was in recognition of his meritorious service as a judge. Moreover, it was felt that a knighthood was apposite to the dignity of the senior bench. Jones finally secured the appointment he craved to the Supreme Court in Calcutta. He had pined to serve as a judge there because it was an advance in his legal career but it would also open a treasure trove of Indian literature for him. India held the same place in the British imagination as Egypt had in the Ancient Roman imagination. India was a gigantic and mysterious country. Its civilisation was venerable yet decayed. India held out many sensual temptations. The Britishers felt they had must to teach the Indians but also much to learn from them. There is no question that Jones was exhilarated to be voyaging to the land that had long entranced him. In 1783, before setting sail for India, he resigned his Fellowship. Univ expected its Fellows to do this if their income became so high that it was unconscionable for them to receive a stipend from the college.

 

In 1783 he went took ship to Calcutta. It is now called Kolkatta. The perilous four month voyage took him around the Cape of Good Hope. Sir William and Lady Anna Maria Jones landed in India in September 1783. Calcutta was the capital of British India. At that time the Honourable East India Company handled the United Kingdom’s relations with India. The Mughal Empire ruled northern India. The Mughal Empire had sold some land to the East India Company. The East India Company owned some ports on the coast of India as well as ruling most of Bengal. Bangladesh did not existed that the time. West Bengal and Bangladesh were united back then and simply called Bengal. The East India Company then governed perhaps 10% of the territory of what is now the Republic of India.

The Calcutta Supreme Court building where Jones sat still exists. It is now called Kolkatta High Court.

Sir William had been an open proponent of American independence. He favoured political reform at home. However, he was convinced that such nostra had no application to India. Jones wrote to a Virginian diplomat Arthur Lee, ‘ I shall never cease thinking that rational liberty makes men virtuous and virtue, happy. Wishing therefore ardently for universal liberty. But your observation on the Hindus is too just.  They are incapable of civil liberty. Few of them have any idea of it and those who have do not wish it. Though I must deplore the evil but know the necessity of it. They must be ruled by an absolute power.   I know the necessity of it. And I feel my pain much alleviated by knowing the natives themselves as well as from observation are happier under us than they were or could have been under the sultans of Delhi or petty rajahs. ’ 

Jones’s view found some agreement amongst Indians. One Bengali Brahmin who concurred was  Pudev Mukuvpaday. This view is deeply unpopular now so Indians are not eager to bring this to public attention. The East India Company did not wish to change Indian Law unless it was exigent to do so. That would anger the people of India and possibly spark a revolt. Therefore the British judges wished to know as much as possible about the traditional laws of India.

In 1784 he co-founded the Asiatic Society of Bengal. The purpose of this society was to promote the study of Indian languages and the appreciation of India’s ancient and magnificent civilisation. The society had a journal called Asiatick in which monographs were published.

Sir William’s Persian was to stand him in good stead. This is because the official language of the Mughal Empire was Persian. The courts of the East India Company also administered justice in Persian.

Sir William was so smitten with India that he composed hymns to the Hindu pantheon. One of the most celebrated poems that he wrote as though he were an ancient Hindu Brahmin  was A Hymn to Ganga. Jones composed this ode to a goddess imploring her to bestow her favour on the British Raj. This is ‘A Hymn to Ganga.’

What name sweet bride will best allure

The sacred air and give thee honour due

 Vishnu Bidy Mild Pishmasu

Sweet Surunaga Trishutapor 

 By that I call its power confess

 Its power confess with growing gifts thy suppliance

Who with all sails in many a light oared boat

On thy jasper bosom float

 No frown dear goddess on a peerless race with a liberal heart and martial grace 

 Wafted from a colder isles remote

As they preserve our laws and bid our terrors cease 

 So be their darling laws preserved in wealth in joy in peace. 

He spent 11 years there and never returned to the British Isles. Jones was to make his name as an Indologist. That is to say a scholar of all things Indian.

In India he wrote under the nom de plume Youns Uksfardi. This was a humourous soubriquet. ‘Youns’ is a Persianised version of ‘Jones’. ‘Uksfardi’ is the Persian for ‘from Oxford.’ This indicates Sir William Jones profound attachment to Oxford.

Persian song of Hafez. It is in the Northern Anthology of Literature.

”     Sweet maid  if thou wouldst charm my sight and bid these arms  thy neck enfold /

That rosy cheek that lily hand would  give thy poet more delight /

Than all  Bukhara’s   vaunted gold  /

 than all the gems of Samarkand /

Boy let yon liquid ruby flow /

And bid thy pensive heart be glad /

Whatever the frowning zealots say /

Tell them their Eden cannot show/

A stream so clear as Ruknabad/

A bower so sweet as Mauzalay/ 

Oh when these fair perfidious maids whose eyes our secret haunts infest

 Their dear destructive charms display  each glance my tender breast invades/

and robs my wounded soul of rest

 / as starters seize their destined pray/

In vain with love our bosoms glow/

Can all our tears, can all our sights new lustre to those charms impart?

 Can cheeks where living roses blow

/ where nature spreads her richest dyes  /

Require the borrowed gloss of art

Speak not of fate ah change the theme

And Talk of odours and talk of wine/

Talk of the flowers that round us bloom/ 

It is all a cloud it is all a dream

 To love and joy thy thoughts confined

Nor hope to pierce the gloom/ Beauty has such resistless power 

That even the chaste Egyptian dame sighed for the blooming Hebrew boy /

For her how fatal was the hour 

When  to the banks of Nilus came a youth so lovely and so coy /

But ah sweet maid my counsel hear/

You should attend when those advise whom long experience renders sage

While music charms the ravished air /

While sparkling cups delight our eyes/ 

Be gay and scorn the frowns of age/

What cruel answer have I heard?/ 

And yet by heaven I love thee still /

Can aught be cruel from thy lip? 

Yet say how fell that bitter word from lips which streams of sweetness fill /

Which naught drops of honey sit/

Go boldly forth my simple  lay whose accents flow with artless ease  /

Like Orients pearls in random strung/

Thy notes are sweet the damsels say

But far sweeter if they please

The nymph for whom these words are sung.   ”

Jones arrived in India not knowing any Sanskrit. He was soon to become a master of the language. He was taught by a pandit – a Hindu priest. Sanskrit is an Ancient Indian language which is used for Hindu prayers and rituals. It was no longer a spoken language even in the 18th century but all the Hindu holy texts are in this language. Jones read the Vedas voraciously. Soon he was well versed in the Hindu scriptures.

Sir William Jones had mixed feelings about the people of India. ‘The Indians are soft and voluptuous but artful and insincere at least to the Europeans whom to say the truth they have had no great reason to admire for the opposite virtues. But they are fond of poetry which they have learnt from the Persians. ’ His verdict about the Indians is not entirely flattering. Looked at objectively, is it possibly at least partly fair? India had a poetic tradition dating far back before much interaction with Persia. Yet Jones has a point. Northern India in the 18th century was imbued with Persian cultural influence. Indeed the Taj Mahal was designed by an architect from Persia. The Muslim educated classes wrote Persian as much as their own languages. The Hindu educated classes also wrote Persian but to a lesser extent than their Muslim compatriots. Persia’s borders were not clearly defined at the time. Those whom Sir William called Persian might well be classed as living in what we call Afghanistan today or even Pakistan. Urdu was the language of most North Indian Muslims. Urdu is a blend of Persian and Hindi.

Sir William said the Persians ‘…The general character of the nation is that softness and love of pleasure, that indolence and effeminacy which have made them an easy prey to  all the western and northern swarms that have from time to time invaded them. Yet they are not wholly void of martial spirit. And if they are not naturally brave they are at least extremely docile and might with proper discipline be made excellent soldiers.’ 

Sir William preferred Greek poetry to Persian. He likened Homer and Thedosy to each other:

‘I am far from pretending to assert that the poet of Persia is equal to that of Greece.  But there is a very great resemblance between the works of those two extraordinary men. Both drew their images from nature herself without catching them and  painting in the manner of the modern poets the likeness of a likeness.’ 

Sir William nonetheless exalted Persia’s contribution to world literature. He speculated as to why this country had so much to give:

‘ But the greater part of them in the short intervals peace that they happen to enjoy constantly sink into a state of inactivity and pass their lives in a pleasurable yet studious retirement and this may be one reason why Persia has produced more writer of every kind and chiefly poets than all Europe together to pursue those arts which cannot be cultivated to advantage without the greatest calmness and serenity of mind.’ 

Despite being very opinionated about these lands Jones never visited Persia nor Arabia.

Jones composed a hymn to the Hindu love goddess. He was aware of the erotic character of much Indian Literature. In his translations of Indian texts he often omitted passages which he felt were too sexually charged for British sensibilities.

Jones delved into philosophy. He  wrote of Francis Bacon’s triad of memory, treason and imagination.

 

Sir William was scintillated by the interconnection between European and Indian languages. He coined the term Indo-European languages. British poets after Sir William drew upon Orientalia to revivify their writing. They learnt new metaphors and similes from Indian Literature. European Romanticism learnt much from Indian poetry. Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Percy Bysshe Shelley were deeply affected by the erudition of Sir William. Think of ‘Kublai Khan’ by Coleridge. In Shelley’s case this may have been particularly so partly because Shelley attended the same Oxford college as Sir William, namely University College, Oxford. Mary Shelley, the daughter of Percy Bysshe Shelley, was also profoundly influenced by work that Sir William had brought to the attention of the Anglosphere. Robert Southey was to owe much to the trail blazed by Sir William. Lord Byron also drew greatly on Sir William’s erudition. Thomas Moore, the Irish poet, read Jones avidly and was persuaded by his judgments on Persian and Arabic literature.

Sir William continued to translate Indian and Persian works into English, French and Latin. Being a jurist he was fascinated by the ancient Indian codes of law. He also studied Sharia Law avidly. Sharia Law was much more humane than English Law back then. Sharia Law prescribed capital punishment for fewer offences than English Law at the time.

Sir William set himself the gargantuan task of writing a Digest of Hindu Law.

Sir William was obsessed with India and expressed huge admiration for India’s cultural accomplishments. Despite this his overall verdict was that he believed in ‘The decided inferiority of most Asiatic nations.’ 

Some have belittled Sir William’s accomplishments. They say that his achievements have been overly vaunted by Britishers who are eager to big up the positive side of their involvement in India. It is noted that much of endeavour to codify Hindu and Islamic Law was simply replicating work already completed by Hindu and Islamic scholars. Jones was unique in translating these texts into European tongues.

Jones also read work from pre-Islamic ideas. He was perhaps too steeped in the Enlightenment to fully appreciate the eras he was studying. He had the greatest of respect for the civilisations he was studying. Only later did British scholars tend to be prejudiced against Indian learning as inherently less worthy of admiration than European endeavours.

It is partly due to the manifold publications of Sir William that the Indian Insitute was later founded at Oxford University. This institute was dedicated to studying the languages and academic achievements of India to prepare men for the Indian Civil Service. The Indian Institute exists long after the British Raj has gone the way of Nineveh and Tyre. It still provides a place to study South Asia.

Sir William Jones is memorialised in the chapel of University College, Oxford. There a relief statue entitled ‘Sir William Jones and the pandits’ depicts Sir William conferring with eminent Hindu scholars. A statue of him there bears a plinth inscription setting forth his manifold accomplishments. The statue shows Indian scholars sitting at his feet as he taught them. It has the words engraved on it ‘He formed a digest of Hindu and Mohametan laws.’ ”Mohametan” was what Muslims were called at the time. It is an allusion to the final and greatest prophet of Islam: the Prophet Muhammad Peace and Blessings Upon Him. This author is a particular fan of Sir William because the present author is also a Univ old member and an Indophile.

The notion that Sir William ‘gave’ laws to the Hindus has been scorned by an Indian academic named Rajiv Malhotra. ‘The Battle for Sanskrit’ is Malhotra’s tome on this vexed question. Malhotra insists that Jones was a pupil of the Indians and not the other way around.

Sir William Jones was said to have command of 13 languages. He could also converse in a further 28. A working knowledge of 41 languages meant that Sir William Jones can be classed as a hyperpolyglot. He was a polymath. Jones even studied Indian Botany and drew plants. He was fascinated by fauna and owned a lemur because it was an especially Indian animal. He was grief stricken when his pet went the way of all flesh. He was acclaimed as jurist as well as a linguist.

He died in 1794. Sir William is interred in Calcutta. His grave can be found at South Park Street Cemetery. Sir William is surely the most revered Welshman in India. Besides the memorial to Jones in Univ College Chapel there is almost a memorial to him in the St Mary’s (the University Church) on Oxford High Street.  Two memorials to him on the same street: it is a measure of the high esteem in which his prodigious accomplishments are held. The Univ memorial to Sir William was intended to be erected in Calcutta Cathedral. (Forgive the usage of 18th century spelling). It was commissioned by Lady Jones, Sir William’s widow. However, for some unclear reason the said marble memorial was never transported to Hindustan and was therefore put in Univ instead. The Univ memorial is tendentious. Some say that he is shown as the master and the Indians are his pupils as he is on the chair. But this may be a misreading of the artistic message. Sir William is taking notes. This is cultural cross-fertilisation. Sir William made it very plain that he exalted India’s intellectual feats. The Indian men appear to be thinking about what they are about to say. The interpretation of this relief statue as being demeaning to Indians is perhaps projecting later prejudices onto a work of the 1790s. Subsequent British administrators, notable Lord Thomas Babbington Macaulay, were of the foolish opinion that the Britishers did not need to be schooled by the Indians.

There is a memorial to him in St Paul’s Cathedral. His statue has him with Hindu laws under his arm. Even those who consider Sir William’s attainments to have been overstated must own that he was a very distinguished jurist and a peerless ployglot.

Only 30 years after his death he was largely forgotten. Since the 1950s his reputation has been rehabilitated. Lord Teignmouth published a very admiring biography of Sir William in 1804. G Cannon published the edited letters of Sir William in 1970. He is the subject of several recent books.

PIERRE GILLIARD – tutor to the children of Tsar Nikolai II.

Gilliard he was  was born in Switzerland in 1879. He grew up in Vaud which is a Francophone canton of Switzerland. He attended the University of Lausanne. Incidentally his surname is pronounced ”JEEL   yar”.

He moved to Russia in 1904 to be the French tutor to the Duke of Leuchtenberg. The duke was a cousin of the Tsar. Gilliard described his trepidation on first sighting Russia. It was a hair raising time to arriving in Russia. The country was reeling from defeat by Japan. The empire was in the throes of an attempted revolution. It took a valiant – or foolish – man to accept a post in Russia. He was initially brought to the Black Sea where the family was wintering. Later Pierre Gilliard travelled with them by train to St Petersburg which was then the capital of the country. They had a mansion at Peterhof  – the suburb that was the imperial residence. The ‘precepteur’ had very high status because the French language was considered more important in international intercourse than English at the time.

The Tsar heard about Gilliard and hired him. Gilliard was at first to tutor the Grand Duchesses Olga and Tatiana. The others were considered too young to be tutored by a man of his intellectual calibre at that time.

Monsieur Gilliard described the first time he ever met the imperial family, ” I was taken up to a small room, soberly furnished in the English style, on the second storey. The door opened and the Tsarina came in, holding her daughters Olga and Tatiana by the hand. After a few pleasant remarks she sat down at the table and invited me to take a place opposite her. The children sat at each end.  ” M. Gilliard started residing at Tsarskoye Selo which lies 13 miles south of St Petersburg.

Pierre Gilliard was an astute judge of character. Any private tutor has to have some emotional intelligence. He quickly got the measure of Grand Duchess Tatiana, ‘She was essentially well balanced with a will of her own though less frank and spontaneous than her sister Olga. Tatiana knew how to surround her mother with unwearying attentions and never give way to her own impulses.’ 

Gilliard recalled that the grand duchesses took turns in keeping their mother company. They did not find the duty entirely congenial. Teenage girls are wont to clash with their mothers sometimes and this family was no exception.

As the years rolled on Gilliard started to tutor the younger children as well. Gilliard later came to tutor the Tsarevich as in the Tsar’s son. Tsarevich was born with haemophilia. He advised against excessive frippery toward Tsarevich Alexei. Gilliard described the Imperial Family’s situation as being one of ”fatal isolation”. Along with just about every other commentator he castigated the impostor monk Grigorii Rasputin as a baleful influence. He wrote of Rasputin, ”This man’s evil influence was one of the principal causes of which the effect was the death of those who thought they could regard him as their saviour.” Gilliard was also adamantine in his insistence that there was no impropriety between Rasputin and Her Imperial Majesty.

Gilliard noted how the Tsarina showed him great respect notwithstanding her own exalted rank. ”   I will give one detail which illustrates the Tsarina’s anxious interest in the upbringing of her children and the importance she attached to their showing respect for their teachers by observing that sense of decorum which is the first element of politeness. While she was present at my lessons, when I entered the room I always found the books and notebooks piled neatly in my pupils’ places at the table, and I was never kept waiting a moment.      ” It is a superb example to follow. If parents wish their children to do well in their education the parents must lead by  being courteous to the tutor. If the parents treat the tutor in an offhand manner so will the pupils and their education will suffer.

Gilliard was later given a request. ‘That year the Tsarina informed me a few days before I left that on my return she proposed to appoint me tutor to Aleksey Nicolaievich, The news filled me with a mingled sense of pleasure and apprehension. I was delighted at the confidence shown in me, but nervous of the responsibility it involved. ” This sums up how many tutors feel when they are offered an assignment with a notable family. Try to bear this in mind if you are hiring a tutor.

Monsieur Gilliard got along well with the Tsarevich. Tsarevich Alexei became his main charge. This was partially because the education of boys was thought to matter more than that of girls. Furthermore, the elder sisters had reached marriageable age and their academic formation was considered complete. Gilliard recounted a typical day of tuition:   ” Lessons (at the time my pupil was learning Russian, French, arithmetic, history, geography and religious knowledge. He did not begin English until later, and never had German lessons) began at nine o’clock, and there was a break from eleven to twelve. We went out driving in a carriage, sledge, or car, and then work was resumed until lunch at one. In the afternoon we always spent two hours out of doors. The Grand-Duchesses and, when he was free, the Tsar, came with us, and Aleksey Nicolaievich played with them, sliding on an ice mountain we had made at the edge of a little artificial lake. He was also fond of playing with his donkey Vanka, which was harnessed to a sledge.. ”

Pierre Gilliard was sagacious enough to realise that not everyone is cut out for scholarly distinction. He also candidly admitted that he achieved only very modest success with the princesses. ”     With the exception of Olga Nicolaievna, the Grand-Duchesses were very moderate pupils. This was largely due to the fact that, in spite of my repeated suggestions, the Tsarina would never have a French governess.…  Olga Nicolaievna did not fulfil the hopes I had set upon her. Her fine intellect failed to find the elements necessary to its development. Instead of making progress she began to go back. Her sisters had ever had but little taste for learning, their gifts being of the practical order      ” To some extent their limited learning is due to their tutor. Perhaps M. Gilliard is seeking to shift the blame. However, we should partly take him at his word. Parents ought to take a tutor’s advice to heart. He proposed that the family engage a French governess and his suggestions was repeatedly rebuffed.

The Swiss gentleman tried to introduce a more informal regime for Alexei when in private.

”        I noticed that the boy was embarrassed and blushed violently, and when we were alone asked him whether he liked seeing people on their knees before him.

“Oh no, but Derevenko says it must be so!”

“That’s absurd!” I replied. “Even the Tsar doesn’t like people to kneel before him. Why don’t you stop Derevenko insisting on it ?”

“I don’t know. I dare not.”

I took the matter up with Derevenko, and the boy was delighted to be freed from this irksome formality.  ”

As if tutoring a future head of state was not daunting enough Gilliard had he added challenge of tutoring a boy with haemophilia.

As a little digression it is fascinating to read Gilliard’s closely observed analysis of Nikolai II’s personality: ”     The Tsar was shy and retiring by nature. He belonged to the category of human beings who are always hesitating because they are too diffident and are ever slow to impose their will on others because they are too gentle and sensitive. He had little faith in himself and imagined that he was one of the unlucky ones. Unfortunately his life seemed to show that he was not entirely wrong. Hence his doubts and hesitations.        ”

Gilliard married Alexandra Tegleva  in 1922. She had been the nurse of the Romanovs.

 

In February 1917 the Romanovs were ousted. In October that year the Bolsheviks seized power. The Romanovs were state prisoners and were sent to Siberia. Gilliard was sent with them. They went to Tobolsk and later Yekaterinaburg. In the spring of 1917 the imperial children fell ill and their heads were shaved. This was a very great sacrifice for the grand duchesses in which girls were all expected to have very long hair. Gilliard was allowed to photograph them all like this. He was one of the only people permitted to take photos of the family. These photos of the front and back of their heads would later become crucial in identifying the skulls of the Romanovs.

In the spring of 1917 Gilliard was living at Tsarskoye Selo – the imperial village near St Petersburg. Like the Romanovs he was a prisoner of the Provisional Government but well treated. ‘Our captivity did not seem likely to last long. There was talk of transfer to England.’

In 1918 the imperial family was moved to Yekaterinaburg. They were in the custody of the Bolsheviks. A civil war was raging in Russia between the Reds (Bolsheviks) and the Whites. The Red officer in charge of the Romanovs was Yakolev. He spoke excellent French and treated the Romanovs and Gilliard reasonably. Then he was replaced by someone much less sympathetic.

Monsieur Gilliard was with the imperial family in exile in Yekaterinaburg. For a while in May 1918 the children were separated from their parents. Pierre Gilliard had to take over the role of father figure for a while without arrogating to himself any pretension of imperial status. The children and Gilliard were not informed by the Bolsheviks where there parents had been taken. In his diary on 3 May Gilliard wrote, ‘Where are they? They could have reached Moscow by now.’ That Easter was the first the children celebrated in the absence of their parents. Gilliard wrote in his journal ‘everyone is in low spirits.’  This was particuarly ironic since Easter was the most joyous time of year for ardent Orthodox Christians. After a few weeks the Tsar and Tsarina were brought back to Yekaterinaburg. Gilliard was alarmed at the attitude of the Red soldiers guarding the Romanovs. They were vulgar and drunk on duty. The Romanovs were subjected to many crude insults. Gilliard’s account has been disputed by other witnesses who claim that the Bolsheviks guarding the Romanovs treated them reasonably.

Monsieur Gilliard was fortunate not to be executed along with the Romanovs. Several of their household staff were shot dead with them. Gilliard remained in Yekaterinaburg because he realised it was about to be recaptured by the Whites. The imminent recapture of the city was the reason the Bolsheviks had decided to wipe out the Romanovs.

Pierre Gilliard wrote of the killings, ‘    The inevitable fulfilment of the climax of one of the most moving tragedies humanity has ever known… the last stage in their long martyrdom… death refused to separate those whom life had banded so closely together… All seven united in one faith and one love… It was the mercy of God that all died together… the innocents were saved from a fate worse than death       ‘

No one can fault Gilliard for lack of loyalty. However, he seemed to focus so much on the travails of the Romanovs that he ignored what everyone else in Russia was suffering. He does not appear to have asked himself why the Tsar was so detested.

Once the Whites took the city Gilliard volunteered his services to help the White commander Sokolov with his investigations into the murder of the Romanovs. The corpses of the Romanovs had been partially burned and thrown down a shaft in the Four Brothers Mine. They had later been recovered and reburied. By the time the Whites were able to stage an investigation the cadavers were unrecognisable. Gilliard and other family retainers were given the unenviable task of trying to identify articles of clothing from the bodies to see if these corpses really were those of the Romanovs.

Russian was in bloody tumult due to the civil war. Public transport was virtually non-existent. The Red Army, White factions, the Green Army, foreign interventionists and many bandits roamed the country. Gilliard was trapped. He married a Russian who had been a nanny to a cadet branch of the Romanovs.

Gillard and other faitthful servants compiled their own report into the murders of the Romanovs. They took their boxes of files with them when they left Yekaterinaburg. They also had boxes of personal effects belonging to the Imperial Family. In January 1920 Gilliard and some of the Romanovs other staff managed to flee Russia by travelling to China. They spent time in Harbin. This city was a magnet for White Russians who had fled their country. There Gilliard wrote, ‘   They were in a state of great agitation for the situation grew daily more precarious and it was expected that any day the  Chinese Eastern Railway might fall into the hands of the Bolsheviks. Bolshevik spies were beginning to swarm all over the station and its surroundings. What was to be done with the documents of inquiry?   Where could they be put in safety. ‘  Gilliard implored the British consul and the French consul to assist him in taking these documents of inquiry out of the country. He was astonished that both refused. The Romanovs were widely reviled in Europe and the British and French governments had to take account of that. Finally a White general Janin took possession of the documents. China was also in turmoil. Warlords roamed the country. Gilliard and his party finally managed to take a train to Vladivostock – one of the last Russian cities in White hands. There he and his companions boarded a French ship Andre le Bon and sailed to Marseilles.

In 1920 Gilliard was finally able to return to western Europe. He initially lived in Paris where he lived in Hotel du Bon Lafontaine. It was the same building as another retainer of the Romanovs, Sokolov. It was on Rue des St Peres. A few years later he moved back to his homeland Switzerland. He was deeply impressed by the fortitude the Romanovs had displayed in their terrible circumstances. Gilliard later published a book about his experiences entitled Thirteen Years at the Russian Court. He wrote in his autobiography, ” My mind was still full of the poignant drama with which I had been closely associated, but I was also still deeply impressed by the wonderful serenity and flaming faith of those who had been its victims.”

Thirteen Years at the Russian Court is a superb sources on the Romanovs. Gilliard heard countless private conversations. He knew them on a personal level. Despite his obvious regard for the family he did his best to remain objective in his book and largely succeeded. Gilliard wrote gorgeous prose that spills onto the page like a musical score. His diaries also providing an unparalleled insight into the final years of the dynasty.

Gilliard moved back to Switzerland. He became a professor at his alma mater.

Gilliard met the woman who claimed to be the Grand Duchess Anastasia. He at first suspended judgment. Having very carefully examined her he reached the certain conclusion that the claimant was an impostress.

1. Gilliard was a very good tutor. This does not mean he was a perfect tutor otherwise he would have done better with pupils of low ability and low work ethic. The fact that the family kept him for 13 years speaks for itself.

 

You can read Gilliard’s account in ‘Thirteen years at the Russian Court’ and ‘Le Tragique Destin de Nicolas II et sa famille .’

Louise Lehzen was born in Germany in 1784. (Nota Bene: her surname is pronounced ”LAY zen”)She was a Christian and belonged to the Lutheran Church like most of her nation.  In fact her father was Lutheran pastor. She grew up in an ambience of erudition. She grew up in the village of Lagenhagen near Hanover. Her family had high social status but little money. Louise was obliged to work as soon as she reached adulthood. Aristocratic women either married as soon as they came of age or else lounged around and waited to get married. Lutheran spent much of their time hobnobbing with the gentry but not actually being part of the gentry.

Louise worked as a governess for an aristocratic Marenholz family. They were highly impressed with her and provided her with a glowing reference. She was dignified, learned, well dressed and totally respectable. She was a very positive influence on the children.  She was good looking and clever. However, she seemed to have no sense of humour.

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THE BACKGROUND OF QUEEN VICTORIA.

In 1819 Princess Victoria of Saxe Coburg Saalfeld sought a governess for her daughter Feodore. Princess Victoria came from one German ducal house and had married into a royal family of a very minor German state Amorbch. To be more accurate her name was Marie Luise Victoria but she was always known by the third of her forenames. Her husband Prince Emrich Charles of Leinigen was much older than her. She had had two daughters and her husband had died young. Louise began acting as a governess to the two girls. Then Princess Victoria married Prince Edward the Duke of Kent. This Edward was the younger brother of the King of the United Kingdom. Therefore she became the Duchess of Kent. The couple had a daughter whom they named Victoria. Henceforward all references to Victoria will be to the daughter and not the mother. Queen Victoria’s mother shall be called the Duchess of Kent henceforth.

The Duchess of Kent arrived in the United Kingdom in her 30s and she spoke limited English. At that time a woman in her 30s was regarded as middle aged. It is no easy thing to immigrate to a country in middle age especially if one is unable to speak the language fluently. The Duchess of Kent never got over the feeling of being an outsider. She did not know British court protocol and sometimes felt confused and homesick.  Unsurprisingly she sought out a Britisher whom she could trust to show her the ropes. She came to put her faith in one of her husband’s equerries. The Duke of Kent had an army officer as his equerry (right hand man). He was John Conroy of the Royal Horse Artillery. Conroy was an Irishman and fiercely loyal to the Duke of Kent. Conroy entertained the whimsy that his wife was the natural daughter of the Duke of Kent. Only a couple of years after the Duchess of Kent arrived in the country her husband died. This made her much more dependent on Conroy than before.

John Conroy was much more than a majordomo. He was there to maintain relations between the Duchess of Kent and the government. He was so close to her that many muttered that the two must be having an affair.

A tutor was sought for Feodore. Dr Kuper was consulted. He was the Lutheran minister at the chapel in St James’ Palace. Dr Kuper knew the von Marenholz family and they recommended the redoubtable Louise Lehzen.

The year that Louise Lehzen became governess to Feodore – 1819 – was the year that Victoria was born. Not many people know that Queen Victoria’s name was actually Alexandrina Victoria. Among the family she was known as ‘Drina’ -short for ‘Alexandrina.’

Louisa Lehzen therefore was first of all the governess to Feodore – the elder half-sister of Queen Victoria. This is because Queen Victoria’s mother was married to a German nobleman and had two children from that marriage. Queen Victoria’s mother’s first marriage was ended by bereavement. Feodore was 12 when Louise Lehezen became her governess.

Queen Victoria was born on 24 May 1819 at Kensington Palace. This was where she spent most of her childhood. Louise Lehzen proclaimed the infant to be ”a splendid baby.”

 

Victoria’s father died in 1820. At this time his daughter was a baby.

Louise was chosen for this post for several reasons. She was German. The family believed she would obey them. She was of the Reformed denomination. There was much anti-Catholic animus in the UK at that time.Louise Lehzen was as much part of the family as it was possible for a commoner to be. She spent Christmas with the family. It was her duty to teach her charge table manners. Upper class children were not permitted to dine with their parents until such time as they had acquired social graces.

Louise tutored Feodore until the child reached the age of 14.Louise Lehzen was noted for being a disciplinarian. However, she never used physical correction. In this respect she was well ahead of the times. Incidentally Feodore’s name was sometimes spelt Feodora at the time which is why it shall be spelt both ways in this text.

 

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LOUISA LEHZEN BECOMES GOVERNESS TO PRINCESS VICTORIA.

Louise was invited to the tutor to Victoria. Victoria was the daughter of Prince Edward Duke of Kent. At that time Victoria’s uncle was king. However, he had no legitimate children.

As a baby Queen Victoria’s nursemaid was Mrs Brock. While the future monarch was in the cradle Louise read to her.

Queen Victoria’s grandmother the dowager Duchess of Coburg recalled   ”In the morning sometimes she does not want to get out of bed preferring to tell all sorts of tales. Lehzen takes her gently from her bed and sits her down on the thick carpet, where she has to put on her stockings.       ”

 

Queen Victoria had been a slow developer as a baby. She was almost two before her mother  had been able to record ”Heute Morgen ist meine geliebste Kind Victoria allein geganen.” (This morning my dearest child Victoria walked on her own.”

Then Louise Lehzen was told to tutor only Victoria. At that time Victoria was 5. As her uncles had no legitimate children. They had reams of children born out of wedlock. Those who were unnuptially solemnised were disbarred from inheriting titles. Therefore it was becoming more and more likely that Victoria would inherit the crown. If her uncles suddenly became the father of a legitimate child then that would change.

Sir John Conroy said that Lehzen had been given this role because, ”  the governess being entirely dependent on the Duchess of Kent she will entirely obey the latter’s will      ”

Louise and Victoria became very close despite the 35 year age gap between them. Louise did not seem to want much money. She tutored this child because she loved her. The two became inseparable. It was blatant that Victoria had more of a bond with her tutor than she did with her mother. Louise urged her ward to be strong minded and to resist the influence of her mother.

Victoria shared a bedroom with her mother. The mother retired later than the child. Louise stayed in the room until her mother came to bed.

Queen Victoria has gone down in history as ”The Widow of Windsor”. However, this is highly misleading. Victoria lived to the age of 81 and her life is evenly divided into two halves before and after the death of her husband Prince Albert. She had a mournful demeanour in the 1860s after her husband died when Victoria was only 41. During her girlhood and youth she was known for her frivolity. Louise Lehzen’s joie de vivre made her a boon companion of Victoria.

Queen Victoria later recalled her upbringing by Louise Lehzen. Writing about herself in the third person she wrote, ”She never for the thirteen years she was governess to Princess Victoria ever left her. The princess was her only object and her only thought. She was very strict and the princess had great respect and even awe of her but that with the greatest affection.”

Victoria was fixated with her huge collection of dolls. It is an obsession that her descendant Elizabeth II later shared. Louise Lehzen as a good governess was willing to share in her charge’s hobby. She took a very keen interest in Victoria’s scores of dolls and the minutiae of their dress. Louise Lehzen made outfits for them and she also taught needlework to Victoria. Victoria did not have the tranquil temperament needed for needlework.

Victoria’s upbringing was very Germanic. Her mother was German and spoke English imperfectly. Many of the household were Germans such as Dr Stockmar and a lady in waiting named Baroness Spath.

George IV was mindful of Louise superb service. He ennobled her making her Baroness. It was unheard of at that time for a woman to be awarded a title in her own right. A woman might inherit one from her father or attain one through marrying her husband. It was not until the 1950s that another woman would be granted a hereditary title like Lehzen was.

People became covetous of Louise’ closeness to Victoria. Some sought to have her sacked. As a tutor she had to set an example of absolute morality. She was unmarried and she must not coquette with men. Some people tried to have her sacked by slandering her: saying she was having a liaison with a male courtier.

Victoria much latter recalled her upbringing by Louise, ”We lived in a very simple manner. Breakfast was at half eight, luncheon at half past one, dinner at seven to which I cam generally when there was no large regular dinner party.” Louise Lehzen had to inculcate table manners into her ward. Like most ruling class children Victoria was not permitted to dine with her parents until she had mastery of table etiquette. Louise had to uphold some rules that Victoria disliked. Victoria was to be given a minimum of sugary and meaty dishes. This is just as well since Victoria was inclined to plumpness. Had she been allowed to indulge her sweet tooth then she would have been obese.

When Victoria was seven years of age she was given a team of two Shetland ponies by the Marchioness of Huntingdon and a phaeton (horse drawn carriage). This phaeton was just large enough for her an Lehzen to sit on it. Of course Lehzen being her favourite person, even more so than her mother, it was with Lehzen that Victoria chose to travel in her phaeton. This tiny coach had to have a coachman who was  ”A liliputian postillion in a livery of green and gold with a black velvet cap.”

Louise had the very important and worrying task of preparing Victoria to be queen. She had to inform Victoria that she would probably be queen. Victoria had not realised this when she was little. Victoria’s uncles realised how excellent Louise was and what emotional stability she provided for their niece.

Louise was in charge of the cultural part of Victoria’s education. This meant dancing, music and art. She had done some basic literacy and numeracy with her. This was no easy task as Queen Victoria later admitted: ” I was not fond of learning as a little child and baffled every attempt to teach me my letters up to five years old -when I consented to learn them by their being written down before me. ”  It is notable that the age when Victoria began to learn to read was when she was put in the charge of Fraulein Lehzen.

One of the many challenges facing Louise Lehzen was to get along with the other tutors. She had to be singing from the same hymn sheet as them. Yet Louise also had to assert her primacy and guide Victoria in a manner that was natural for the governess. She managed to maintain cordial relations with the other tutors and this was a considerable feat.

A clergyman called Dr Davys taught the girl the harder subjects. The Reverend Doctor George Davys was a fellow of Christ’s College,  Cambridge. In those times the title ‘doctor’ for anyone other than a medical man was for an honorary doctorate in divinity and not for a PhD. Substantive doctorates did not exist in the United Kingdom at the time. Rev Dr Davys was also the vicar of a parish in Leicestershire which was 100 miles from London. He necessarily neglected his parish because he had to devote most of his time to his royal pupil. He paid another clergyman to discharge his duties to the parish. This  was not an uncommon practice at the time. Rev Davys was later promoted to be Bishop of Peterborough by Queen Victoria. This was in recognition of his meritorious service.

Rev Davys had to teach the future monarch to speak English properly. Queen Victoria’s mother spoke to her in her Germanic English. The child therefore picked up some Germanisms such as saying ”so” as ”zo” during a pause in her speech. The queen’s mother did not realise the golden rule of bilingual child rearing. One parent speaks the language that he or she speaks fluently to the child. The other parent should speak the other language that he or she speaks fluently to the child. Victoria’s father was long dead but there were other native speakers of English about.  Soon enough the princess spoke flawless English. She was then smart enough to tackle History and Geography.

Rev Davys was responsible for her religious upbringing. The mid 19th century was to be an epoch of spirited debate in the Church of England. The Oxford Movement was talking off at that time. That was an intellectual movement of those who believed that the Church of England should revive its Catholic traditions while still remaining outside the Roman Catholic Church. Davys was a conventional Anglican clergyman. He was not a member of the Oxford Movement nor was he an outspoken Protestant either. He found his pupil to be exceptionally pious.

Thomas Steward, a writing master at Westminster School, was also brought in to teach Victoria. Mr Steward taught Victoria arithmetic, writing and Geography. She took to this like a duck to water.

A Lutheran clergyman Henry Barez helped Victoria with German writing.

Victoria also had a riding master. She was taught to dance by a woman since it would not do for a man to teach her terpsichoreanism.

Richard Westall was her drawing  master. Westall was a Fellow of the Royal Academy – which is a huge accolade for an artist. Victoria adored drawing and showed a considerable aptitude for it.

Mr Sale taught her singing and music. Her instrument was the pianoforte. He was an organist as St Margaret’s Church, Westminster. Victoria was a gifted songstress but she was not keen on the piano. Victoria was not a biddable pupil. When he told her that in order to ameliorate at the gay science she must practise she slammed lid of the piano down ”there is no must about it” she declared regally.

Victoria’s lessons were from nine thirty to eleven thirty. She had afternoon lessons from 3 pm to  5 pm. After that she learnt English, French and poetry. She spoke French decently but found grammar taxing. She had Religious Instruction once per week with Reverend Davies. This was especially needful for the person due to be head of the church. Music and dancing were weekly lessons too.   Victoria had plenty of lessons in German. Although she spoke German before English she found that German grammar was a headache.

Louise Lehzen or the Duchess of Kent accompanied Victoria to every lesson. This enabled Lehzen to keep an eye on what was being taught and her pupil’s level of attentiveness and effort. Moreover, it allowed her to go over any difficult topics with Victoria later. Victoria even had lessons on Saturday but not Sunday. She spent an hour letter writing on Saturday.

Another governess sometimes stood in for Louise. She was the Duchess of Northumberland.

Louise Lehzen had the formidable task of presiding over this team of tutors. They did not always see eye to eye with each other. She also had to intercede for them with their pupil. One of the most challenging task for a governess or governor is to maintain a co-operative relationship with other members of the household staff.

Louise never smacked Victoria. This was incredibly humane at the time. Bear in mind that severe beatings of entirely children for trifling wrongdoing was par for the course at the time. Even royal children were usually soundly whipped. The young Victoria was not an easy child to care for. She frequently through tantrums. Her governess’ firm but patient attitude won the child around.

Victoria spent most of her free time with Louise. They walked around the grounds. Victoria attended to her dozens of dolls or ‘babies’ as she called them.There was 132 dolls at one stage. Victoria had them as characters from stories and plays and would act out the tales with these dolls. Louise was willing to meet Victoria on her own level and join in these childish games.

Victoria recognised that her antics were sometimes deplorable. ”I am shocked… I hope to become a good and obedient child. I want to hear Mamma say ”I am pleased.”     ”

In 1830 Louise began to keep a ‘Good Behaviour Book’ about Victoria. This was a misnomer as the said book mainly recorded misbehaviour. Victoria confessed to being ”very ill-behaved and impertinent to Lehzen.” This Good Behaviour is an excellent example of Louise as the superlative governess. Her record keeping was efficient. She was always forcing her pupil to reflect on her conduct. Note how Victoria referred to Lehzen by her surname – without the word Miss in front of it. This is how aristocrats alluded to their servants.

Louise had to walk a tightrope. She had to chide Victoria and maintain control over her without being insulting or smacking her at all. Victoria was sometimes insolent. It is a testament to Louise’s judgment and diplomatic skills that she managed to control Victoria’s bad behaviour and gradually improved it without offending or alienating her wayward and recalcitrant pupil. Tutors, governesses and governors often face this quandary. They are either too hard or too soft. They are bound to be criticised from one angle or other. They cannot win.

George IV was so elated with the way that Louise Lehzen was bringing up her niece that he ennobled her. For a woman to be given a title in her own right was unheard of at the time. George IV was King of Hanover as well as of the United Kingdom. Louise was made a baroness in Hanover.

In 1830 George IV died. The new king was William IV. He was also an uncle of Victoria. William IV was married to Adelaide but they had no children. Mrs Martha Wilson was a Lady of the Bedchamber. This was a crucial court position. Louise Lehzen was canny enough to form a cordial relationship with Mrs Wilson.

Victoria was not allowed to attend her uncle’s coronation. She was very hurt and letdown. She cried for hours – seeking consolation hugs from Louise. She always turned to Louise for moral support and not her mother. Despite this no one claimed that Louise attempted to turn Victoria against her mother. Victoria’s unfilial outlook was of her own making.

On one occasion Louise put a chronological table into Victoria’s history book. The teenager remarked ”I am closer to the throne than I thought.” It would be astonishing if she had not known she was second in line to the throne. Perhaps she was unaware that her uncle William IV was so old compared to most monarchs. The king was becoming ever more infirm and the succession could not be long. This even shows Louise’s astuteness and sense of History. Although she did not teach academic subjects besides German there is no doubt that she had a formidable intellect.

Louise was fascinated by History. This is unsurprising bearing in mind she worked in a family which had made History for centuries. She and Victoria often discussed it informally. Victoria sympathised with her ancestress Mary Queen of Scots who was seen to be womanly by comparison to Elizabeth I. Victoria described Mary Queen of Scots as ”a model of perfection.” It shows great broadmindedness that she favoured a Catholic over a Protestant especially as her heroine had been convicted of high treason. Louise told Victoria that she would profit from the example of Elizabeth I who was more hard headed. ”I can pardon wickedness in a Queen but not weakness” said Lehzen.

As Queen Victoria entered adolescence Sir John Conroy became an increasingly important influence in her household. Conroy had been the confidante of her late father the Duke of Kent. Sir John Conroy came to have sway over the Duchess of Kent. Victoria’s uncle, King William IV, was a fan of Conroy. The king believed that Louise Lehzen could not possibly be up to the task of preparing Victoria to be head of state. The king insisted that Sir John Conroy be given a greater role in the tutelage of Victoria. Unfortunately, Sir John loathed Louise Lehzen. This was probably at least in party due to envy of Louise’s closeness to the future monarch. Fraulein Lehzen did not have an amicable relationship with Sir John Conroy but this was a reflection on Conroy and not on her. He was unable to establish a co -operative relationship with any of his colleagues. For instance Sir John Conroy described Leopold King of the Belgians as ”as great a villain as ever breathed.” Conroy called Victoria’s cousin Ernst Duke of Coburg ”a  heavy handed humbugged German. Immoral” which evinces some Teutonophobia. Conroy called Baron Stockmar, ”a double face villain.” That he called Louise Lehzen ”a hypocritical and detestable bitch’‘ says more about Sir John that it does about Fraulein Lehzen. Conroy was sychophantic to the Duchess of Kent and viciously envious of anyone else whom he thought might win her respect.

John Conroy detested another member of the household Baroness Spath. Baroness Spath was also German and assisted Louise Lehzen. Conroy managed to have Spath dismissed for supposedly being a gossip. Lehzen was too important to be sacked. The dismissal of her friend made Louise Lehzen revile Conroy even more. Happily, Baroness Spath was found a position on the household of Princess Feodora in Germany. Victoria was worried that John Conroy would contrive an excuse to get rid of Louise Lehzen. Louise was Victoria’s boon companion. Victoria was worried because Conroy had the Duchess of Kent wrapped around his little finger.  The Duke of Wellington was not alone in believing that Conroy was the paramour of the Duchess of Kent. As Victoria aged she became more independent minded. She was ever closer to Lehzen and the Duchess of Northumberland – her other governess. She turned more and more against Conroy and even against her mother.

The real reason for Conroy’s loathing for Louise Lehzen is laid bare by his statement, ”While eating her Mistress’s bread in the Palace that infamous woman wholly stole the child’s affections and intrigued with King William and Miss Wilson.” It is blatant that Sir John Conroy was merely jealous of the close relationship between Louise Lehzen and the princess. There is one thing that even Conroy agree on: Victoria loved her tutor. Note that when Louise Lehzen kept William IV informed about his niece Victoria’s progress this is regarded by Sir John Conroy as a conspiracy. Louise was convivial and thus managed to have productive working relationships with various courtiers such as Miss Wilson (Lady of the Bedchamber). The paranoiac Sir John Conroy regarded this as scheming.

Sir John Conroy devised the Kensington System for the upbringing of Victoria. The Duchess of Kent (Victoria’s mother) came to be persuaded that Sir John’s ideas were wise. He said that Victoria ought to be kept away from her louche uncles. They were notorious voluptuaries known for their languor and dissipation. Her uncles had private lives which can charitably called ‘colourful.’ Their interests consisted of gluttony, gambling, alcohol, opium and adultery. None of these were edifying for an impressionable adolescent.

There was some logic to Sir John’s approach in shielding Victoria from the immoral conduct of her uncles. On the other hand if Victoria was to be apprised of affairs of state she needed to spend time with her uncles. Despite their scandalous private lives these men knew much of public business. Some of Sir John’s critics felt that he merely wished to line his pockets by maintaining his post for as a long as possible. He was suspected of pecculation from the Duchess of Kent’s finances. Certainly his family had been relatively poor compared to the rest of the upper class when he entered royal service. By 1837 they were very well off indeed.

One Victoria’s younger uncles was the William, Duke of Clarence. The Duke of Clarence was anxious that Sir John Conroy had too much control over his niece. The duke’s wife, Adelaide, wrote to Victoria’s mother not to permit, ”Conroy too much influence over you but keep him in his place. …He has never lived in court circles or in society so naturally he offend sometimes against traditional ways for he does not know them. .. In the family  it is noticed that you are cutting yourself off more and more with your child..” This William Duke of Clarence was later King William IV.

Victoria’s education was not solely academic. She was brought on trips around the country. One of the failings of her grandfather George III was that he rarely left London and almost never ventured outside of South-East England. Victoria visited Oxford in 1832. This was not simply to see and be seen. It was enabling her to know her future realm.

Lehzen was certainly successful in inculcating a lifelong love of learning into her pupil. Queen Victoria had a lively intellectual curiosity. She was also an extraordinarily prolific diary. She started her journal at the age of 13 under the tutelage of Miss Lehzen. It started on 31 July 1832 and was initially to record her tour of Wales. Victoria wrote an average of 2 500 words in her diary each day. This was a huge amount considering how busy she was to become as a sovereign and a mother of nine children. Her articulacy and his inquisitiveness are at least partly attributable to her governess. The queen was even more productive than we realise because many of her diaries were burnt by her family after her death. They edited the diaries and only published the less controversial and less personal passages. The unexpurgated diaries will of course have been longer than anything that the public has read. Louise is always ”dear Lehzen” in the diary.

Queen Victoria’s diaries are full of her heartfelt affection for Louise. Her voluminous diaries are surprisingly candid and emotional. Louise was the golden standard of both friendship and service for Victoria. The queen demanded her later friends and servants lived up to this but no one quite managed it. Louise’s presents to her pupil were always the most appreciated because they were chosen with the most care.

In her teens it became more and more obvious that Victoria would be queen. The United Kingdom had not had a Queen Regnant as opposed to a Queen Consort for well over 100 years. Victoria’s uncle Prince Charles of Leinigen was anxious that the teenager would be unable to fulfil her role unaided. He suggested a regent in the shape of Sir John Conroy. Conroy was a man of vaulting ambition and unequaled vanity. He jumped at the idea and may well have been its author. It did not come to pass.  Even when Victoria was very ill Sir John entered her bedroom and demanded that she promise to make him regent. Louise Lehzen gave Victoria the confidence to refuse.

Conroy put it about that Victoria was weak-minded, slothful and totally unsuitable for monarch. He put down all these shortcomings to Louise’s misgovernment. As Victoria had to be queen a long regency was called for. This was a means of extending his control and lining his pockets.

Lady Flora Hastings became a companion of Victoria. This was by order of William IV. This was intended to reduce the influence of Louise. But Victoria was still closest to Louise and had little time for Lady Flora. Victoria came to hate Victoire Conroy – daughter of John Conroy. Conroy was trying to insinuate his daughter into the princess’ household.

From Lehzen’s point of view John Conroy was villainous. Conroy had his qualities but he is widely acknowledge to have been tactless and inept. It shows had superb Louise was that she managed to retain her position despite the enmity of John Conroy.

Louise was given many presents by Victoria. Victoria also made sure her governess had a prominent role in her rites of passage. For instance, she sat in the front row at Victoria’s confirmation. William IV refused to allow Conroy to enter the Chapel Royal for the event. The Duchess of Kent thought that Victoria’s confirmation made her an adult in some senses. Victoria was 16 and easily old enough to wed by the law of the time. The duchess wanted to put Louise out to grass. Victoria stuck up for Louise and insisted that she stay. In her diary Victoria wrote,  ”I will become a dutiful and affection daughter to Mamma. Also to be to dear Lehzen who has done so much for me. ”

In August 1835 Victoria toured Great Britain. Lehzen accompanied her. The governess helped the princess pass the time by reading to her.

Louise was said not to be a good looking woman. Her nose was her worst feature. Nevertheless she was admired for her hairstyle and her tastefully demure clothes. Victoria insisted on imitating Lehzen’s hairstyle.

Louise had to nurse Victoria through a serious illness in the winter of 1835. She had to liaise between Victoria and Dr Clark as a physical examination of her by a male doctor was unacceptable. Conroy used the illness as a chance to attack Louise – blaming her for her pupil being unwell. Later Dr Clark ”restored her [Victoria] to her necessary peace of mind” said Lehzen. Victoria in her diary remarked on Louise’ solicitousness, ‘‘      Dear Lehzen has been so unceasing to me in her attentions that I shall never be able to repay her but by my love and gratitude. She is the most affectionate, detached and disinterested friend I have and I love her dearly for it.     ”  Victoria’s feet were cold as a result of her sickness. Louise took it upon herself to rub Her Royal Highness’ piggies to keep them warm.

Once Victoria recovered she began to take light exercise. A couple of times a week she would go for bracing walks. She liked to perambulate on Hampstead Heath. Hampstead Heath was then very much on the edge of London. Louise always accompanied her. They sometimes visited the Zoological Society of London as it was then called. We would now simply say ‘the zoo’. It had been opened only a few years before: in 1828. Naturally her governess was always with her. As Victoria blossomed into womanhood her governess was there as more of a chaperone. Victoria must never be alone with a man lest some rumour spread abroad that there had been any impropriety between her and a member of the opposite sex.

Victoria’s uncle Leopold was increasingly influential in her life when she was in her teens. Leopold knew that the way to Victoria’s heart was through Louise Lehzen.  Victoria was then 17 and it was time to consider whom she might wed. Leopold was eager that Victoria should marry her first cousin Prince Albert. If Leopold was to persuade Victoria to marry Prince Albert then he must first persuade Louise of Albert’s merits. He wrote to Baroness Lehzen, ”          I talk to you at length and speak through you to Victoria. For years Victoria has been treated as a mere subject for speculation. Her youth gave opportunities for a thousand avaricious schemes. Only you and I really care about her for her own sake. We were systematically persecuted because it was particularly feared that the child might grow fond of us. The chief plan has been since 1828 to drive you away. Had I not stood felt you might have followed Spath.   Her 17th birthday marks an important stage in her life. Only one more year and the possibility of a Regency vanishes… This is the perfect time for us who are loyal to take thought for the future of the dear child. ” Leopold then emphasised that Victoria should marry Prince Albert forthwith.  He went on to laud Prince Albert for his ”pure unspoilt nature.”

Louise Lehzen was circumspect about Victoria getting engaged to Albert. There was no need to rush into it. Other suitors should be considered. Some said that Louise had less high minded motives for wishing Victoria to tarry. If Victoria wed then Victoria was most certainly a grown woman and would have no need of a governess. Louise would lose her position at court. If Louise could not prevent marriage altogether she could at least delay it and draw her handsome salary for a few more years yet.

In May 1837 the nation jubilated Victoria’s 18th birthday. Louise Lehzen was prominent in the celebrations. There was bunting hung across High Street Kensington: this was just around the corner from Victoria’s domicile at Kensington Palace. Victoria was driven out of her palace in a coach to greet the elated crowds. Whom did Victoria choose to have beside her as she accepted the acclamation of her well wishers? It was not her mother but Louise. ”The demonstrations of loyalty and affection were highly gratifying” wrote Victoria in her trademark priggish style.

In 1837 William IV died. Victoria was proclaimed queen at the age of 18. Victoria quickly dismissed Sir John Conroy. He said he must be given a pension of GBP 3 000 per annum which was a jaw dropping sum at the time as well as a noble title. His impertinent insistence was rejected.

On the day Victoria ascended the Throne she wrote in her diary, ”My dear Lehzen will ALWAYS remain with me as she is my friend and she will not no situation but with me and I think she is right.”

Victoria moved into Buckingham Palace. Kensington Palace was too small and old fashioned for her. Louise came with her. She was made private secretary. She had the power to pay for bills or withhold payment. Victoria gave her mother, the Duchess of Kent, an apartment at the far end of Buckingham Palace. Louise’s bedchamber was right beside Victoria’s and had a connecting door.

Sir John Conroy had charge of Queen Victoria. He had a personality clash with Louisa Lehzen whom he described as ”a detestable bitch”. Such foul language was strong indeed for a more genteel era. This vulgar outburst reflects on Conroy and not on Louisa Lehzen.

Victoria was very eager to be shot of John Conroy. John Conroy demanded a massive pay off of GBP 10 000. Victoria’s mother had made promises to Conroy that her daughter would pay him this enormous gratuity and elevant him to the peerage. Victoria used Louise to convey messages to the Prime Minister that Conroy was not to receive this staggering sum nor was he to be made a peer of the realm. Conroy tried to browbeat Louise to no avail.

It was only when Victoria became queen that she slept alone. Up until that time Louise had slept in a bed at the foot of Victoria’s four poster bed. Victoria still wrote her journal as Louise had encouraged her to do in her girlhood. Only Louise was permitted to peruse Her Majesty’s inmost pensees.

Louise attended Victoria’s coronation. This was extremely sought after. Only a few hundred people could cram into Westminster Abbey and few had a good view of proceedings. The Prime Minister at the time, Viscount Melbourne, was high in laudanaum throughout. This derivative of opium was entirely legal as a recreational drug at the time.

One of Louise’s few failings is that she was perhaps too supportive of Victoria. She always backed Victoria’s wishes when sometimes Louise ought to have told her that she was in error.

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PRINCE ALBERT.

Victoria was told by the Prime Minister that she ought to wed. Louise tried to tell her not to marry. She should remain single like Queen Elizabeth I. Like most people Victoria wanted to marry and refused to be a virgin queen. Her choice fell upon her dear first cousin – Prince Albert. She married this German prince in 1840.

Louise Lehzen maintained her position. Her pupil still had much to learn. Louise Lehzen was a bosom companion and mentor as well. As many very serious duties were thrust upon Victoria it was reassuring to have a trusted figure from her childhood still with her. Louise Lehzen was granted the title Baroness. It was almost unheard of for a woman to be given a title in her own right. A woman might inherit a title or marry into such a title but to be awarded a title for her own merits was an astonishing feat.

Unfortunately for Louise Lehzen one of the most influential figures at court was Lady Flora Hastings. Lady Flora ”was violent against Lehzen” (in the metaphorical sense) as the Morning Post newspaper reported. Lady Flora Hastings was later the subject of much controversy. She was unwed and was accused of having a romantic liaison with Sir John Conroy who was a married man. Victoria too readily believed this because she disliked Lady Flora and abominated Sir John. Lady Flora ill and this was taken to be due to pregnancy. A whispering campaign against her made life unbearable. She summoned doctors to examine her physically. This was a very drastic measure for the time. In the early 19th century doctors (all male) almost never performed a physical examination on a female patient. They verified that she was not with child and indeed that she was as pure a virgin as the day that she was born. The luckless woman was indeed very unwell and died a few months after this false scandal erupted. As Conroy was a sworn enemy of Louise Lehzen he claimed that the specious claim that Lady Flora had been pregnant was first made by Louise. Lady Flora Hastings’ family was a wealthy and very notable one. It is unlikely that the bogus claim that Lady Flora was copulating was started by Louise but nevertheless Conroy managed to have Louise labelled as a calumniator.

Victoria had a soft spot for the elderly Whig Prime Ministers. Victoria used her extensive powers of patronage to grant court positions to Whig ladies. The Tory Party did not like this. The Tories were in the ascendant and clamoured to have Tory ladies appointed to court positions. Louise Lehzen was said to be part of a Whig cabal.

An anonymous pamphlet was circulated in London entitled ‘Warning Letter to Baroness Lehzen from beyond the grave.’ It was as though it was written by the late Lady Flora Hastings. It accused Baroness Lehzen of having far too much influence on Victoria and poisoning her mind.

Prince Albert moved to the United Kingdom. He was displeased to see Louise had as much influence over Victoria as he did. Despite her earlier misgivings Louise saw that Prince Albert was a suitable match for Victoria. Prince Albert and Victoria began spending much time with each other to see whether a marriage really could work. Louise professed herself to be delighted when the couple were plighted.

Not everyone was over the moon when Victoria’s engagement to Prince Albert was announced. Some accused Lehzen of bringing in yet another German into the court. The previous five British monarchs had married Germans so the British Royal Family could not be much more German than it already was. Baroness Lehzen was a useful scapegoat for those who disapproved of the Queen’s decisions but preferred not to attack the Queen directly.

The following piece of doggerel expressed the prejudice harboured by not a few:

He comes the bridegroom of Victoria’s choice

The nominee of Lehzen’s vulgar voice

He comes to take for better or for worse

 England’s fat queen and England’s fatter purse. 

One thing everyone can agree on is that for good or ill Baroness Lehzen had a great deal of sway with Victoria.

When it came to Victoria’s wedding say she had herself dressed by Baroness Lehzen. Louise did not usually perform this lowly task but on that day of all days Victoria wanted her governess’s personal touch. The wedding took place in the Chapel Royal which is a very small place of worship opposite St James’ Palace. Royal weddings were not large or extravagant affairs at the time.

Prince Albert at first found Lehzen useful. She  knew Victoria better than anyone. She was a vital conduit for telling the Queen things that he did not wish to vouchsafe himself. Yet he quickly became wary and resentful of someone who was closer to his wife than she was. Albert was a man for whom the expression ‘serious’ might have been invented. He was an intellectual and unsmilingly sincere. He wished to be kept abreast of affairs of state. He was aghast that Victoria would consult the Prime Minister and Baroness Lehzen on political questions but not him. He could understand the Queen seeking the counsel of her PM but her governess? He was envious.

Despite the initial romance there were teething problems in the marriage. Prince Albert wrote, ”I could not be more unhappy.” Like many grooms he was having cold feet. The trouble was this was AFTER he had married Victoria. He reflected on the enormity of the duty he had assumed and the unclear parameters of a prince consort’s position.

The Queen became pregnant within weeks of her bridal night. Albert was not the only one who disliked Baroness Lehzen’s might. A courtier called Mr Anson wrote, ”       Lehzen is taking advantage of the Queen’s illness to complain about the Prince’s conduct at a moment when due to natural excitability it could not fail to work strongly on the Queen’s mind. She is always in the Queen’s path always pointing and exaggertaitng every little fault of the prince, constantly misrepresenting him.        ”

Perhaps it was Anson and not Baroness Lehzen who was unfair. Albert was not universally liked. His English was not fluent at first. He was haughty, humourless and too convinced of the inferiority of all things British. Prince consorts are often disliked for their wish to expand their role.

His Royal Highness Prince Albert disliked the fact that Lehzen’s bedroom adjoined that of Albert and his wife. He was stunned that Baroness Lehzen ran the household. The Master of Horse, the Lord Chamberlain and the Lord Steward all reported to her. She was in charge of money. His privy purse was disbursed to him by Baroness Lehzen which he found to be deeply degrading. He accused Baroness Lehzen of laxity and profligacy. Here there is some merit to his allegations. British royal palaces were notoriously badly run in the 1830s. A palace was run by several teams of servants who did not co operate with each other. One team was to clean the inside of windows and another to clean the outside. Another team laid fires and still another lit them and another cleaned them afterwards. Teams of servants were always arguing it was another team’s duty to do something and not their own duty. Pilfering of candles, coal, firewood, food and wine was rife. Security was very slack. One homeless boy stole into Buckingham Palace and lived there for weeks. In the nighttime he would emerge to steal food. In the day he hid in chimneys. The palace was often cold for lack of fuel or because the fires had not been set or lit. The place was untidy and unclean.

He succeeded in having her position downgraded. She had some role in the upbringing of Queen Victoria’s first child who was also named Victoria! Queen Victoria was so elated with the way that Baroness Lehzen had raised her she naturally wished her governess to superintend her own children.

Prince Albert wrote of Louise Lehzen to Baroness Stockmar, ”Lehzen is crazy, stupid intriguer, obsessed with the lust of power, who regards herself as a demigod, and anyone who refuses to recognise her as such is criminal. I declare to you s my and Victoria’s true friend that I will sacrifice my own comfort, my life’s happiness to Victoria in silence, even if she continues in error. But the welfare of my children annd Victoria’s existence as sovereign are too sacred for me not to die fighting rather than yield them as prey to Lehzen.” This speaks volumes for Baroness Louise Lehzen’s might that Prince Albert accorded such a high priority to getting rid of her. She perceived herself as being important because she was important. She was due to play a crucial role in the upbringing of Victoria’s children who were babies at the time this letter was written.

Prince Albert became obsessed with having Louise dismissed. He wrote, ”The Queen has more fear than love for the baroness and she would really be happier without her though she would not acknowledge it.      ” Albert was fooling himself.

Years later Victoria wrote in the third person, ”  It was not personal ambition at all but the idea that no one but herself was able to take care of  the queen and also she did not perceive till later that before leaving the Queen she told herself that people flattered her and made use of her for her own purposes.     ”

 

Lord Melbourne believed that if  Victoria were forced to choose between Albert and Baroness Lehzen she would choose the latter: ” Albert cannot argue that if he put it in a matter implying that either the baroness must go or he would not stay in the House owing to the Queen’s obstinacy and determination of her character her reply would be ” in this alternative you have contemplated the position of living without me, I will shew you that I can contemplate the possibility of living without you.” Poor Albert could do nothing but fume and dub his enemy House Dragon.   ”

Victoria was eternally indebted to Baroness Lehzen. Queen Victoria mainly credited Lehzen with giving her the courage to stand up to Conroy’s bullying.

The Prince Consort became adamant that Baroness Lehzen must be retired. He wrote, ”All me disagreeableness comes from one and the same person and this is precisely the person Victoria chooses as her friend and confidante.  ” Baroness Louise Lehzen asked that the income from the Duchy of Cornwall be used to fund the nursery. Her Majesty the Queen agreed. Albert was incensed. He correctly observed that theretofore the revenue of the Duchy of Cornwall had been entailed to the Prince of Wales. Indeed that is the case today. Edward VII, then an infant, was the eldest son of Albert and Victoria. The eldest son of the monarch is usually styled Prince of Wales.

Finally Victoria was cajoled into letting Baroness Lehzen go. Victoria wrote in her journal, ”Our position is different to that of other married couples. A is in my house and I not in his. I am ready to submit to his wishes as I love him so dearly.”

In 1842 Prince Albert succeeded in having Louise put out to grass. Queen Victoria awarded Louise Lehzen a very liberal pension of 800 sterling a year. For modern values put two zeroes on the end then multiply by two. On 30 September 1842 Louise Lehzen left the palace at dawn. The consummate professional, she was much to dignified to make a scene. Albert was then exultant. Baroness Lehzen returned to her native land. She remained in epistolary contact with Her Britannic Majesty. Queen Victoria always replied promptly to My Dear Lehzen. Baroness Lehzen never married. She died in 1870.

John Cheke was the tutor of Edward VI.This surname is pronounced ”cheek”. John Cheke was born in 1514. Sir John Cheke, as he became, was famous for being a most eminent scholar of Greek.

John Cheke’s father Peter Cheke was an esquire which meant he was part of the gentry. That is to say they were  minor landowners but did not had an aristocratic title or a knighthood. An esquire was a man who could employ the personal services of a manservant. A manservant was not a man working on the esquire’s farm or in his business. A manservant was to serve the esquire food, fetch his shoes and so on. An esquire would have other men in his employ for more impersonal tasks. Peter Cheke had an administrative position at the University of Cambridge. John Cheke later wrote he was brought up by the Bishop of Chichester. It is unclear what he meant by this. It is possible that the man who later became bishop had taught him.

John Cheke went to St John’s College, Cambridge. John Cheke was immediately recognisable due to his red hair. While he was up at Cambridge he came into contact with the teachings of the Dutch scholar Erasmus. Erasmus never visited Cambridge but his beliefs were well known among educated men. Erasmus strongly criticised corruption and unbiblical practices within the Catholic Church without actually advocating breaking away from the Church. Simony and the selling of indulgences were particular bugbears of Erasmus. He sought internal reform of the Catholic Church and not the Protestant Reformation i.e. setting up a separate church. Cheke found himself in agreement with the Dutchman’s critique of the Catholic establishment. Cheke was made  fellow of the college at the incredibly young age of 15. These days someone would be lucky to be made a fellow at the age of 40. A fellow is a member of the governing body of the college. The fellows chose the head of the college. The fellows are most lecturers but they can also be other employees o the college of eminent graduates of the college.

Cheke was ordained a Catholic priests. All education in the country was provided by the Roman Catholic Church. Fellows of Cambridge and Oxford colleges had to be priests.

In the 1530s England was in religious ferment. The country had been staunchly Roman Catholic. In 1533 the king took the country out of the orbit of Rome. The Church of England was created. The Catholic Church was outlawed in England. Cheke happily went along with the Reformation. It was risky not to do so. From being a Catholic priest he became an Anglican priest. Anglican is the adjective of the Church of England.

Cheke’s fame as a lecturer and scholar grew. He was an authority on the Greek orator Demosthenes. He was renowned for his translations of Greek texts including the Gospel according to St Matthew. The king awarded him an exhibition for his studies. This was an honour but also money to live off. To give himself more gravitas John Cheke grew a beard.

There was a tendency among academics to use Latin and Greek terms in English sentences even when this was unnecessary. Cheke warned against this pretentiousness and wrote,               “I am of this opinion that our own tung should be written cleane and pure, unmixt and unmangeled with borowing of other tunges; wherein if we take not heed by tiim, ever borowing and never paying, she shall be fain to keep her house as bankrupt”.      At that time it was commonplace for people to write even personal letters to each other in Latin. Cheke wrote to his friends in Latin even when these were English friends.

Roger Ascham was one of Cheke’s undergraduates at Cambridge. Ascham later  wrote The Scholemaster which was a book on pedagogues. In it he lauded Cheke. Ascham had been ambassador to the Holy Roman Empire and a weekly correspondent with Cheke.

John Cheke was known to have Protestant beliefs. Henry VIII endowed some professorships in 1540. Cheke was made the first ever Regius Professor of Greek at Cambridge. A regius professorship is one set up by the monarch. Richard Cox was the tutor of Henry VIII’s only son Edward VI. Henry VIII asked the Archbishop of Canterbury  (Thomas Cranmer) to recommend another tutor for the prince. This was because Cox was increasingly busy with ecclesiastical work. Archbishop Cranmer recommended John Cheke.

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CHEKE BECOMES PRAECEPTOR

In 1544 Cheke was appointed tutor to Edward VI.  A 19th century biography of Cheke by John Strype tells the tale: ”Henry VIII calling him thence July 10 1544 as judging him a fit person to be a schoolmaster to his son Edward.”

John Cheke was at first deputy to Richard Cox. As the state papers say he was given this post, ”for the better instruction of the prince and diligent teaching of such children as may be appointed to him. ” His official title was the Latin word ‘praeceptor’ which means tutor. They even used the word praceptor when speaking English.

Cheke was only 30 when he was given this most demanding of positions. He had already held the chair of Regius Professor of Greek at Cambridge. A regius professorship is a chair endowed by the Crown. There are very few regius professors indeed.

Cambridge was regretful at having to part with so distinguished as scholar as John Cheke.

Edward VI was the only son of Henry VIII. Therefore the boy’s education was prospectant to him being king. Edward VI was then 7 years old. Cheke was to teach the prince Religious Studies, languages and a little Science. At that stage Edward VI spent much of his time at a royal residence in Hertford. That house is no longer in the possession of the royal family.

Edward VI could be seen as an emotionally damaged child. His mother had died soon after Edward VI was born. He was brought up until the age of 6 as effectively an only child which was highly unusual at the time. Two stepmothers appeared on the scene and were then got rid of: once by execution. When the boy was born his father was 46 which was a very old father for the time. His father was distant and irascible. Worse was to come with Edward VI seeing his father, two uncles and his beloved stepmother all die before he was 13. This may explain why he was inured to death: even his own.

Henry VIII called his only surviving son ”the greatest person in Christendom.” Henry VIII was egregiously vain even for a 16th century monarch. The scale of his boast gives some idea of the expectations placed on Cheke’s shoulders. If Edward VIII failed to shine then Cheke may well pay a very heavy price.

Katherine Parr was Henry VIII’s last wife. She wed him in 1543 when he was 52 years old. The king mellowed in his dotage. Henry VIII was not particularly old by modern standards – he died at the age of 55 – but he was by 16th century standards. Furthermore, his infirmity left him mentally obtunded. His much younger wife Katherine Parr persuaded him to allow his daughters Mary and Elizabeth to return to court whence they had been banished years before. Henry VIII had declared that both of his daughters were illegitimate and had no right of succession but they were still notable persons in the pecking order. Katherine Parr took especial interest in the education of hertwo younger step children. Katherine Parr did not concern herself overmuch with Mary Tudor because Mary Tudor was 27 when Katherine Parr married Henry VIII. Mary Tudor was almost as old as Katherine Parr.

 

Edward VI grew very fond of his stepmother Katherine Parr. He addressed her as ”most dear mother” and he was appreciative of what his stepmother had done to advance his education. In 1546 at the age of 9 he wrote to her: ”I received so many benefits from you that my mind can hardly grasp them” and his mind could grasp a lot!

Katherine Parr had a very high opinion of John Cheke and Richard Cox whom she described as ”God’s special advocates.”

John Cheke was given the task of reforming the pronunciation of Greek letters. He said he would be ”merry on the bank’s side without dangering himself at sea.” This metaphor was because others were engaged in tendentious doctrinal work. The monarch was fickle and had a violent temper. People who were found to have altered relgious doctrines in a way the monarch found displeasing could be executed.

 

 

Cheke worked alongside Richard Cox. Cox was willing to birch his royal pupil. Dr Cox spent less and less time with the prince because Cox was called away to his church duties.  Cheke’s title as tutor was ”First Instructor”. Dr Cox was known to be conceited and distant. The prince found Cheke to be kinder.

 

Edward VI had glasses: one of the first people in the British Isles to do so. The prince also had plenty of toys. He also had various relics of his late mother who died 12 days after giving birth to him.  The prince also learnt musical instruments.

 

Edward VI learn to be write fluent Latin. The prince also had Jean Belmain as his French tutor. Edward VI even wrote an essay entitled ”Against the Papal supremacy” in French. The theological content was much to the liking of his English tutors. There were other specialist tutors too. Edward VI was taught Spanish and Italian but not by John Cheke. Cheke did not speak those languages. The prince also learnt to play the lute and another musical instrument called the virginal. Although Cheke did not teach Edward VI those subjects Cheke was still responsible for superintending the other tutors.

Cheke though taught the boy Geometry. Edward VI was bought a globe. He showed a lively interest in Geography. He was given coins from many different realms to examine. This use of realia in the classroom was ahead of its time. The prince began to grasp fiscal matters. The prince began to keep a diary under Cheke’s supervision which he called hisChronicle.  One annalist wrote of the education that Cheke provided to Edward VI; ” Qua neque Cyrus nec Achilles neque Alexander neque ullus unquam Regum politoremque sanctioremque accepit.” (”Not even Cyrus, not Achilles, nor Alexander nor any other king had a more polite or holier education.”)

Since John Cheke was devoting most of his time to his young pupil he could only visited Cambridge occasionally. His university teaching necessarily played second fiddle to his royal duties. Besides teaching Edward VI he also taught Elizabeth. At this time there was some uncertainty as to whether Elizabeth should be regarded as illegitimate or not. At this time Elizabeth was coming back into her father’s good graces. Edward VI was becoming fond of his half-sister Elizabeth. They began to write to each other regularly as well as occasionally visiting each other.

Edward VI had some classmates. These were Charles Brandon and Henry Brandon. Charles Brandon, the elder brother, later inherited the title the Duke of Suffolk. These boys were also second cousins of Edward VI. The purpose of them studying with him was manifold. It allowed him to have playmates. These boys were not princes but they were close to it. They would also be some of the mightiest magnates in the kingdom. It would do well for him to build a rapport with them from an impressionable age. Furthermore, if Edward VI died young as often happend (and indeed transpired) there was some chance that one of these lads who inherit the English Crown. They were not far down the line of succession.

Barnaby FitzPatrick was also Edward VI’s classmate. FitzPatrick’s father was a peer of the realm. One historian claimed that Barnaby FitzPatrick was the prince’s whipping boy. That is if Edward VI did not behave then Baranaby would be caned instead because the prince could not be caned. The teacher hoped that Edward VI would be so upset by the sight of another child being beaten that he would behaved himself in order to save the other boy being beaten. This story is probably specious

It would appear that Edward VI found John Cheke’s lessons to be more enthralling than those of Richard Cox. Cheke invited notable academicians to visit the prince and discuss the latest learning with him. Walter Haddon, the poet, came to court to give a recitation to Edward VI. This was quite something for a child who was not yet 7 years of age. The boy was made to feel that nothing was intellectually beyond him. John Leland, the geographer, came and discussed his famous book ”Itinerary” with the prince.

There was an extensive royal library for Edward’s use. At that stage most of the books were beyond the grasp of even the brainiest child. There was also a huge colourful globe for his edificaiton. There were curiosities from various parts of the world including an elephant’s tooth by which the records possible mean a tusk. There was also the egg of a giant bird – possibly an ostrich. This all helped serve to expand his horizons. Curiosity was implanted in his young mind.

Edward VI had his own study and custom made desk. There was an invetory of his classroom paraphernalia. He had geometric instruments. There were also astronomical instruments.

In 1547 Cox married Mary Hill. His wife was the daughter of the sergeant of the king’s wine cellar. John Cox and his wife had several children. His three sons all had distinguished careers. They started to spell their surname ‘Cheek’.

Henry VIII had not announced that priests were allowed to marry. Some Anglican priests had began to marry. Whereas the Catholic Church forbade clerical marriage the Church o England was agnostic on the issue. The Church of England was outside the control of the pope. However, it was not fully Protestant either. It retained some Catholic doctrines and practices. This pleased traditionalists. Some radicals were dissatisfied and wanted the Anglican Church to be explicitly Protestant.

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THE PUPIL BECOMES MONARCH

In 1547 Henry VIII died and his son Edward VI became king.

In January 1547 Edward VI received the dreaded news that his father was dead. A courtier named Hayward recalled the moment when the news of their father’s death was broken to Edward VI and his elder sister Elizabeth, ”Never was sorrow more sweetly set forth, their faces seeming rather to beautify their sorrow than sorrow cloud the beauty of their faces.    ”

The death of Henry VIII was kept secret for three days. Edward VI was brought from his house at Hertford to the Tower of London. The Tower did not have a reputation as a prison in those days. It was a royal residence. Edward VI was proclaimed king three days after the decease of his father.  The heralds proclaimed ”The High and Mighty Prince Edward by the Grace of God is solely and rightfully succeeded to the throne by decease of his late father Henry of happy and glorious memory. Whereof with one assent of tongue and heart we proclaim to be your undoubted sovereign.”

This high and mighty prince was the but 9 years of age.

The proclamation was read at St James’ Palace – then as now this little known building is the official residence of the royal family: not Buckingham Palace. The proclamation was read aloud at the Royal Exchange in London and in market squares across England, Wales and Ireland.

 

The nobility, the episcopate and the principal gentlemen of quality gathered at the Tower of London to do obeisance to the new sovereign. Among those doing homage to the boy king was John Cheke.

Edward VI’s maternal uncle Edward Seymour became Lord Protector of the Realm and Governor Edward VI. Lord Protector of the Realm was to rule on behalf of the monarch during the monarch’s minority. Edward Seymour raised himself to the noble title Duke of Somerset. This was because he own large estates in the county of Somerset.

Edward VI’s other uncle Thomas Seymour – Edward Seymour’s younger brother – was made Lord Admiral. Thomas Seymour also had himself granted a hereditary title Lord Sudeley. Lord Admiral meant he was not an ordinary admiral. He was in overall charge of the Royal Navy.

A council existed to help the king govern. Edward Seymour was not to rule alone. It was a time of intra elite warfare. Members of the council jockeyed for position. They tried to manoeuvre each other off the council. There was much intrigue and espionage. Edward Seymour engaged in pecculation from his nephew’s treasury.

 

 

At Edward’s coronation the Archbishop of Canterbury stressed that this king was to further the work of the Reformation. The king was, he said, a new Josiah: the boy king in the Bible who stood up for righteousness and put iniquity to flight.

As the king was so young a lord protector ruled for him. This office went to his maternal uncle Edward Seymour. Edward Seymour had his nephew award him the title Duke of Somerset. Somerset was the county in which Edward Seymour had most of his estates. There was a twelve member regency council of laity and churchman to help the lord protector.

The 9 year old monarch still had lessons. Cheke wrote poems for his pupil. These were for the little monarch’s entertainment and edification. In 1547 Cheke fell ill and believed he was dying so he wrote a poem to Edward VI. Here is one verse : ‘For us a guardian tow’r remain/ Through ages long and jolly/ Nor give our house a moment’s pain/ Through thought’s intrusive folly.’ 

 

Under Edward VI the Church of England became avowedly Protestant. The Reformation demanded iconoclasm. The Church of England moved against mariolatry and the veneration of saints. The tomb of St Thomas a Becket in Canterbury Cathedral was smashed. The church service was no longer called mass. The Bible was to be in English. The Henrician  Reformation had had Bible in English. Henry VIII had later changed his mind and ordered that the Bible should only be available in Latin.

Edward VI wrote about the anti-Catholic campaign in his Chronicle, ” The Bishop of London’s injunctions touch plucking down altars. An order was sent to every bishop to pluck down altars and to forbide mass and suchlike ceremonies and abuses.”  The religious dogmas also changed under the Edwardian Reformation. The laity were given communion in both kinds i.e. both bread and wine. Until that time the laity had not been given wine. The doctrine of justification through faith alone was proclaimed.

The moot point is to what extent Edward VI was driving these reforms? A child cannot be wholly responsible for his own beliefs. To a large extent his opinions were shaped by his tutors. Chief among them was John Cheke. The Roman Catholic Church existed as an underground movement. Catholic aristocrats hid priests in secret basements and chambers in their houses. These were called priest holes.

Edward VI seems to have been very Godly even for the 16th century. He read 12 chapters of the Bible every day. This was under the supervision of Cheke.

Cheke entered Parliament as MP for Bletchingley. At this time the University of Cambridge wrote an official letter to Cheke expressing its highest laud for him: ”Of all that number of very eminent men. most eminent Cheke, that ever went forth from the university into the commonwealth [kingdom] you alone are the man, above all others, loved being present and admired being absent.”

He was later Provost of King’s College, Cambridge. This is perhaps the grandest college in the university. He was made a commissioner of Oxford University. He was made a fellow of Eton because it was connected to King’s College, Cambridge. Cox served on many church committees. He also served on the Privy Council. Privy means ”private”. Privy councillors met the monarch about once a week. They were like a cabinet. They offered the monarch advice on various matters.  Their deliberations are kept secret. A privy councillor has the title ”the right honourable” before his name.

Not everyone was happy with the way Lord Protector Seymour was ruling on behalf of his nephew. There were some peasant rebellions over tax and religious issues. One of these was called Kett’s Rebellion as it was led by a tanner named Robert Kett. Kett and his acolytes were mainly rebelling over the enclosure of common land. This meant that public grazing land was given over to aristocrats for their exclusive use. This impoverished the peasantry. Edward VI recorded the rebellions in his Chronicle or diary, ” People began to rise where Sir William Herbert put them down, overran and enslaved them. Then they rose in Hampshire, Essex, Suffolk, Hertfordshire.      ”  

Cheke was keeping his pupil advised of these worrying events. The boy was given to believe that the rebels were utterly wicked.   Some of the elite disliked Edward Seymour too. The main rival to Edward Seymour was John Dudley. People began to say that Edward Seymour was exploiting the tenderness of the king’s years. He was wielding all regal power himself. He denied the king even pocket money. Edward Seymour found out his younger brother, Lord Sudeley (Thomas Seymour) was secretly handing coins to Edward VI.

 

In fact Edward Seymour gradually reduced the council’s control. He took more and more decisions on his own. Edward Seymour bamboozled his little nephew into signing over more authority to him. Eventually he had the Great Seal in his own residence. It was a huge pile in London which he arrogantly named Somerset House. John Cheke tried to help Edward VI to resist Edward Seymour’s attempt to become overmighty. Edward Seymour attempted to bribe Cheke into becoming and accomplice in persuading the child king in establishing Seymour was dictator in all but name. Cheke refused such doceurs. John Cheke was alienated by Edward Seymour’s blatant attempts to exploit the child’s youth and inexperience. This was dangerous for Cheke. Edward Seymour was the mightiest man in the kingdom. He could and did execute those who stood in his way.

Lord Sudeley (Thomas Seymour) had molested Elizabeth.

Thomas Seymour (Edward VI’s uncle) was arrested in 1549. He had entered Edward VI’s chamber in the middle of the night with a loaded gun. Thomas Seymour was sentenced to death. It was up to the king to sign the death warrant. The 12 year old’s hand did not tremble as he signed. Some have commented that Edward VI was distinctly lacking in one Christian virtue: mercy. On the other hand the firmness and even cold bloodedness that any leader needs was present in him. Perhaps this is praiseworthy. His tutors needed to school him in when to be compassionate but also not to be soo clement as to be remiss.

Edward Seymour tried to cajole his nephew into signing a new Treason Act. The child asked the advice of his tutor John Cheke about this. Cheke urged his pupil not to sign. Edward Seymour was suspected of trying to invest himself with dictatorial powers. It was very difficult for even a consummate political operator to know what to do. It was impossible for a 9 year old orphan to know what to do. He had to rely on the guidance of his tutor. Cheke was an academic who was minded to steer clear of politics. He also had to think about the welfare of his pupil. This necessitated Cheke sometimes giving his pupil advice. John Cheke had to induce his charge not to sign state papers that the boy did not fully understand. Edward Seymour tried to take advantage of his nephew being so young. Even the wisest statesman can be outfoxed. A child of tender years had little chance against a crafty and ruthless politician like Edward Seymour.

Edward Seymour grew increasingly unpopular. There were revolts. He fluctated between resolution and panic. The economy was in freefall. Taxation was on the rise. Religious controversy raged. Edward Seymour tried to kidnap his nephew. His maladministration led to his overthrow in a bloodless coup. Edward Seymour was detained in the Tower of London. He was stripped of his position as Lord Protector. John Dudley became the new Lord Protector.

Edward Seymour still had plenty of cronies on the outside. He had been charged with various crimes. He managed to have his allies help him. Some charges were dropped and he was acquitted of the others. Edward Seymour was released after 6 months. He was again on the council but was not Lord Protector. He still plotted to regain power. In the meantime he embezzled from the royal treasury. Edward Seymour was again arrested and charged with his treason. This time he could not pull strings effectively. He was found guilty and sentenced to death. Edward Seymour was executed.

Edward VI’s education continued. Cheke taught him from Isocrates, Cicero and Pliny. He also had to attend to his kingly duties.

Edward VI attended divine worship almost daily. He listened to sermons with rapt attention. The priests often made explicit comparisons between the most distinguished member of their congregation and Josiah. Edward VI knew full well who Josiah was. This boy king in the Bible reformed religion and is held up as a paragon of monarchical virtue. Over and again he was likened to Josiah.

Edward Seymour had his brother executed for this. Edward VI recorded this in his journal or Chronicle as he called it: ”  There was a disputation of the sacraments in the Parliament House.  Also the Lord Sudeley was condemned to death and died the March ensuing.   ” This was very advanced and lucid writing for a 10 year old. Cheke had taught him well. It also suggests a shocking indifference to one uncle killing another uncle.

The whole of the Chronicle is unsentimental. Perhaps this was Edward VI’s nature or maybe he was taught to be this way by Cheke. A king could not afford to be too emotional.

Cheke wrote a tract denouncing all rebellions entitled Hurt of Sedition how greneous it is to a Communeweith. John Cheke also wrote a letter to the rebels telling them how wrong they were. He emphasised that it was their duty to obey laws made by the King and Parliament.

In 1549 there was a large scale insurrection in eastern England. It was led by a minor landowner named Robert Kett. John Cheke wrote a book entitled ”The Hurt of Sedition” explaining why this attempt to subvert the government was wrong. He inveighed against the rebels:

”And yet ye pretend that for God’s cause and partly for the commonwealth’s sake ye do rise when as yourselves cannot deny ye seek in word God’s cause, do indeed break God’s commandments and that ye seek the commonwealth have destroyed the commonwealth”

 

Edward VI’s Chronicle seemed to foreshadow the ouster of his uncle, ”In the meantime in England arose great stirs likely to achieve much if it had not been well foreseen.” The king then described the events: ”    Somerset commanded the armour to be brought out of the armoury at Hampton Court and people to be raised.  That night with all the people I went to Windsor at nine or ten o clock at night and there was watch and ward kept every night.     ” All this was written under the instruction of Cheke. This was seen as an attempt to bring the king under the sole control of Edward Seymour (the Duke of Somerset).

The king turned against his uncle. In 1549 Edward Seymour was overthrown as lord protector  by John Dudley. Seymour was sent to the Tower of London. He was eventually released but later released. Then Edward Seymour was indicted for sundry offences and convicted of all. He was awarded the supreme sanction and later executed. ”Somerset  [Edward Seymour] had his head cut off at the Tower of London at eight or nine o’clock in the morning.” The king listed the charges of which his uncle had been convicted, ”   False ambition, vainglory, entering into rash wars, enriching himself of my treasure, following his own opinion and doing all by his own authority.    ”

John Dudley took over as lord protector. Cheke was an ally of Dudley so it was excellent for him that the palace coup succeeded. John Dudley had the little king raise him to the title of Duke of Northumberland. Northumberland, in the north-east corner of England, was the county in which John Dudley owned extensive estates.

 

Edward VI at this time was working on a text wherein he denounced the doctrine of papal supremacy. He was conditioned to be anti-Catholic. His forthright opposition to Roman Catholicism met with the fulsome approval of his tutors. Edward VI was then 12 years old so it is doubtful that he had much of a mind of his own. Nevertheless his composition of such a booklet shows remarkable intellectual maturity and articulacy.

Edward VI’s elder half-sister was Mary Tudor. She was a passionate believer in Catholicism. Catholic priests were being burnt in public. The queen’s sister was not harmed despite her Catholicism being known. At first Edward VI turned a blind eye to the fact that she was sheltering Catholic clergy in her house. Eventually the king ordered her priests to be taken away by force and locked up in the Tower of London. Mary Tudor was from the Holy Roman Empire on her mother’s side. The child king wrote in his Chronicle about this request, ”  April 1550. The Emperor’s ambassador requested by letter’s patents that  my lady Mary might have leave to say mass. It was denied him. ”

King Edward VI in his Chronicle how he summoned his grown up sister to be rebuked for not conforming to Anglicanism.”There was declared how long I had suffered her mass in hope of her reconciliation and how now I could not bear it. She answered that her soul was God’s and her faith she would not change nor she would not dissemble her opinions with contrary doings. It was said I constrained not her faith and  I willed her not as a king to rule but as a subject to obey and that her example might breed too much inconvenience.” This shows a sophisticated grasp of Theology for a 12 year old. Cheke had worked well.

Edward VI became increasingly independent minded as he entered his teens. The emperor of the Holy Roman Empire insisted that Mary Tudor be allowed to hear mass: the Roman Catholic church service. Edward VI refused despite the Holy Roman Empire threatening war if he did not make this concession. The king’s ministers implored him to relent. The monarch was unwavering. There is no doubt as to his sincerity. His self-assurance and principle are products of his education. Perhaps his lack of pragmatism is to be regretted.

In 1550 Edward VI began to study”Rhetoric”, ”Ethic” and ”Dialectic” by Aristotle. He started to translate Cicero’s Philosophia from Latin into Ancient Greek.

Sir John Cheke said that his pupil could comprehend Latin ”with accuracy, speaks with propriety and writes with facility.”

Cheke wrote ”my endeavour is to give him no precept unaccompanied by some remarkable example.”

Martin Bucer said that the king was ”learned to a miracle”. The monarch was also learning Italian. Bucer continued in his description of Edward VI’s erudition:”No study delights him more than the scriptures of which he daily reads ten chapters with the greatest attention.”

The king was hellbent on advancing the Reformation. Many images had been smashed and paintings whited over. The adoration of artwork was considered idolatry by him. He loathed the veneration of saints which he regarded as Roman Catholic superstitition. His zeal for Protestantism was down to his schooling at the hands of Cheke. Not everyone considers iconoclasm to be laudable. But there is no doubt that tutors have enormous influence with their pupils as evidenced by the king’s passion for Protestantism.

Edward VI welcome foreign Protestants who sought asylum in England. He was very happy to grant them permission to establish their churches in England.

The Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Cranmer, was very pleased with the king’s scholarship and his religious fervour. Cranmer commented to Cheke ” Master Cheke you may be glad all the days of your life that we have such a scholar for he has more divinity in his little finger than we have in all our bodies.”

 

By 1551 Edward VI was writing a thousand word essay in Latin and in Greek every fortnight. The subject matter demonstrated yet again that he was mad keen on Christianity. He mused as to whether adulterers should suffer death by stoning. He did not reflect whether his late father deserved such a fate! He also wrote about whether peace was entirely beneficial. He always examined both sides of the argument before arriving at his conclusion.

 

At the age of 13 Edward VI was studying the Ethics of Aristotle. It is notable that 1800 years after Aristotle this king was learning from the works of the first recorded private tutor. Cheke was also teaching his royal charge from the Ancient Greek writer Xenophon. The oeuvre of the philosopher Tully was also used to teach His Majesty. In 1551 he was knighted for his services. Edward VI began to write an autobiography presumably under the direction of John Cheke.

Cheke encouraged his pupil in astronomy. Edward VI wrote ” Who hold that it is not useful to the body, nor the mind, nor the State, a view which not undeservedly ought to be the subject of much cursing. What is more natural than understanding the principles of the sky and of the planets, the constellations through the courses of which bodies ….the grasses and the flowers are ruled? ”

The scholar king was an ornament to his tutors.

A tutor called William Thomas was brought in to teach the king Politics. Edward VI also learnt about Economics from Thomas. One of the hot potatoes of the day was whether or not to debase coinage. Henry VIII had melted down silver coins and reissued coins with a reduced silver content. This had temporarily solved the government’s cash flow crisis but in the long run greatly undermined confidence in the currency. Edward VI’s ministers were proposing to use the same gambit. It appeared to be the only way to balance the books in the immediate term. Yet in the long term it would lead to hyperinflation.

 

The king began to be given more authority. Cheke had to help ease him into maturity. The boy was wise beyond his years. He was also notable for his indifference to the deaths of others. This ruthlessness was a virtue in a 16th century king.

Edward VI was well apprised of what was going on in his realm. In 1551 he wrote gloomily of the state of his nation, ” Slack execution of laws has been the chiefest sore of all. The laws have been manifestly broken and offenders punished, and either by bribery or foolish pity escaped punishment. The disention [sic] and disagreement both in private matters and in matters of religion has been no little cause but the principal has been contentioustalking of foolish and fond people which for lack of teaching have wandered and broken, wilfully and disobediently the laws of this realm. ” It is noticeable in this excerpt that he did not think that religion was a private matter. This gobbet shows his eloquence and sophistication. He also insisted on being informed about what was occuring. He was sagacious enough to demand to hear bad news as well as good.

 

King Edward VI was a workaholic when it came to affairs of state. He was forever receiving delegations and ambassadors. He spent much time agonising over the minutiae of government policy. Despite his punishing workload the king still maintained his curriculum Sir John Cheke became concerned that his pupil was exhausting himself.

Edward VI met Jean Calvin the Swiss-French Protestant leader. His Majesty was graciously pleased to receive a copy of Calvin’s French translation of Isocrates.

In 1552 another Prayer Book was published. It was a bold statement of Protestantism. The Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation was explicitly disowned. Cranmer wrote this book and Edward VI gave it his seal of approval.

In the summer of 1552 Edward VI went on a ‘royal progress’ for the first time. This meant travelling around the country with a retinue of up to 4 000 courtiers, retainers and soldiers. The king and his entourage would stay at the houses of noble families. It was a chance for the king to show himself and to go on a tour of inspection. The Privy Council, including Cheke, traveled with the monarch.

The king passed comment on some fortifications that he visited. Cheke impressed on the boy king that peace was wise and moral. Henry VIII had fought wars for most of his reign. He had achieved little and almost bankrupt the country. Edward VI took this lesson to heart and strove to remain at peace with other realms. The king wanted to built more military defences and establish a large standing army. His purpose was solely defensive. There is no reason to suppose the monarch was seeking to mislead his tutor.

In late 1552 Edward VI fell ill. It did not seem serious at first but his condition gradually deteriorated. It would appear that his immune system had been fatally undermined. He had fever and great difficulty breathing. He was so debiitated that people began to fear for his life. John Cheke had the unenviable task of telling the 15 year old that is might be wise to make his last will and testament. The king did so.

In February 1553 Edward VI became ill with a severe cold. His health deteriorated rapidly. Dudley saw what was happening. The king was coughing up blood. It was a suppurating pulmonary infection.

Through 1553 the king’s condition worsened. He was bed bound. His fingernails and toenails came loose and he coughed up blood. It is likely that he had tuberculosis. Medical historians have surmised this based on the symptoms described. Such a diagnosis can only be an educated guess. Any physician will tell you that one cannot make a diagnosis confidently without seeing the patient. Tuberculosis may seem a strange illness for a king to catch. It is a poor person’s disease. Those who contract it are usuually malnourished, already ill and living in cold, damp and insanitary conditions. The king lived in the best of conditions. It was an illness that compromised his immune system that made him suscepticble to even a passing acquaintance with tuberculosis. The king insisted on continuing lessons.

Cheke gave his terminally ill student some books. Cheke commented, ”How kindly and courteously he received them and how greatly he esteems them. ”

Yet still Sir John Cheke had not abandoned hope that the king might pull through. Cheke wrote, ”should a longer life be allowed him I prophesy that with the Lord’s blessing he will prove such a king as neither to yield to Josiah in the maintenance of true religion or Solomon in the management of the state or to David in godliness. ”

John Dudley had his son Guildford Dudley marry the 15 year old Lady Jane Grey who was the king’s second cousin. The king’s will was altered to leave the Crown to his cousin Lady Jane Grey. As Dudley was the father-in -law of Jane Grey he believed that he would still be effectively in control. The Privy Council, including Cheke, endorsed the king’s will.

By the summer of 1553 the king’s legs were distended. He could not digest and so kept vomiting. He whispered to Cheke ”I am glad to die.”

Edward VI’s half sister Mary Tudor was the other claimant to the Crown. She was an ardent Catholic. Dudley and Cheke did not want her gaining the throne. In July 1553 Edward VI died uttering a prayer in English not Latin.

The king’s last words were ”I am faint Lord have mercy upon me and take my spirit.”

His death was kept secret for 4 days.

==============================

AFTER EDWARD.

Lady Jane Grey was proclaimed queen. Lady Jane Grey became queen. Edward VI had changed his will weeks before to alter the line of succession. Lady Jane Grey was his cousin. Edward VI had disinherited his half sister Mary Tudor. The Church of England viewed Mary Tudor as illegitimate. The Catholic Church held that she was legitimate. Mary Tudor was an ardent Catholic. Cheke swore allegiance to her. He was appointed Secretary of State by the 16 year old queen. Mary Tudor gathered her supporters and marched on London.

Cheke wrote to Mary Tudor on behalf of the council. He scorned the ” suppose title which you judge yourself to have ”and reiterated that Jane Grey was the true queen as provided for ”by sundry acts of parliament remaining yet in force.”

John Dudley, still Lord Protector, gathered troops and set out to arrest Mary Tudor. John Dudley stressed that Mary Tudor was ”a bastard” and had no claim to the Crown. She had left home two days before Edward VI died. Clearly her agents had kept her well informed of her half-brother’s closeness to death. Mary Tudor moved to Framlingham Castle and gathered supporters. Soon thousands of men had rallied to her banner.

Mary Tudor insisted that she was the rightful queen. Sir John Cheke wrote a repudiation of Mary Tudor’s claim to the Throne.

Some towns proclaimed Mary Tudor queen and only a few declared for Lady Jane Grey. Some members of the elite deserted Lady Jane. Within 9 days Lady Jane’s supporters had mostly turned their coats. Mary Tudor was so confident of her position that she took a further two weeks to enter London.

Mary Tudor rode into London to general acclamation. Some worthies who had previously declared for Lady Jane were minded to skip the country. John Cheke chose to remain. Cheke like most others recanted their ‘misguided’ support for Lady Jane. Lady Jane and her husband (John Dudley’s son) were locked up in the Tower of London. The members of the elite who had supported Lady Jane all claimed that John Dudley had forced them to do it. John Dudley was Lady Jane’s main backer and indeed saw her as a means of continuing his rule. He was also a handy scapegoat. He was promptly executed.

 

Lady Jane Grey’s supporters deserted her. Mary Tudor then had her and Cheke arrested. John Cheke was held under house arrest. He was required to live at the house of Peter Osborne.

Dudley ran away. Lady Jane Grey and her husband were thrown into a dungeon. Cheke had been a very wealthy man but all his property was declared forfeit to the crown. Cheke was in danger of being executed. His Protestant reforms had outraged Mary Tudor.

John Dudley was caught in Cambridge and put to death. The next year Lady Jane Grey and her husband were executed.

John Cheke was desperate to save his skin. Cheke did a lot of back pedalling. He vowed fealty to Mary Tudor. He recanted his fatal Protestant errors. Cheke wrote to the queen begging her to show mercy. He pleaded for absolution and announced that he was a fervent Catholic. It worked.

John Cheke was forgiven for his error in supporting Lady Jane Grey. He was set free. He wrote to Mary Tudor thanking her for her compassion. ‘Whereas it hath pleased Your Highness to extend your gracious mercy towards me and something to mitigate the severity wherewith justice of law  might grievously have burdened me…’ He went on to say he had not offended as gravely as others. He then pleaded with her to give him his property back. Cheke noted that he had been given property by Henry VIII. John Cheke was pushing his luck!

 

Cheke left the country because there was always the chance that he could fall under suspicion again. He worked as a lecturer in various continental universities. One of these was Padua in Italy. In the home of Catholicism he found it prudent to pretend to conform to the Catholic Church. He also dwelt in Antwerp and Strasbourg.

Cheke’s fears had been well founded. His former patron Thomas Cranmer was burnt at the stake for his heretical beliefs. Cranmer’s recantation of Anglicanism had not been enough to save him from this punishment. John Cheke was in the Netherlands when he was seized by English agents.

Mary Tudor’s husband King Philip II of Spain wanted Cheke brought to England. Cheke was returned to London and imprisoned in the Tower of London. He repeated his conversion to the Catholic Church. He pleaded with Reginald Cardinal Pole to forgive him. Cardinal Pole, the queen’s cousin, was unmoved by this blatant insincerity. In prison Cheke wrote ‘A Royal Elegie’ dedicated to the late Edward VI.

Sir John Cheke died in prison in 1557. He was 43 years old He is buried in St Albans Wood. Peter Osborne then brought up Cheke’s children. Despite Cheke’s pleading poverty. Cheke’s estate was worth over  1 500 pounds when he died. Cheke’s widow married within a year and had three more children.

His sister married Lord William Burghley who was Elizabeth I’s right hand man. From Cheke’s sister the noble Cecil family is descended.

=================================

POSTHUMOUS REPUTATION.

Ascham, his contemporary, described him as ‘the cunningest master and one of the worthiest gentleman that England ever bred.’ Cunning did not then mean crafty.

Cheke taught almost everyone who was at Cambridge during his time. This was because Greek was compulsory at the time. He was known to be the foremost Greek scholar of his generation. He was fondly remembered by many of his former pupils in their memoirs.Olynthiacs of Demosthenes mentions Cheke. Thomas Nash in To the Gentlemen Students praises Cheke to the moon as,  “the Exchequer of eloquence, Sir John Cheke, a man of men, supernaturally traded in all tongues.”    

Cheke has been the subject of a number of admiring biographies. Among them is The Life of the Learned Sir John Cheke KT First Instructor after Secretary of State to Edward VI, one of the great Restorers of the True Religion and Good Learning in this Kingdom written by John Strype in 1821.

Shakespeare and John Milton both doffed the cap to John Cheke.

Cheke was a superb tutor. This is because of his own scholastic brilliance and his ability to engage the mind of his pupil. He was firm with the boy king. What he taught Edward VI was not just academic. Cheke taught the sovereign certain precepts as well as life skills. Cheke had a profound influence on English History. He shaped the mind of the monarch. Under Mary Tudor many of the changes effected under Edward VI were reversed. However, the Counter-Reformation did not survive Mary Tudor. After her five year reign England returned to Anglicanism.

Henry Compton. Tutor to Queen Anne.

Henry Compton was born in 1632. His father was the Earl of Northampton, a title still held by Henry Compton’s collateral descendants. Because his father was a peer of the real the boy had the prefix Honourable in front of his name. This is usually contracted to ‘Hon’. Hon Henry Compton was the sixth son so there was very little chance he would inherit the noble title or much property. This was a time of enormous upheaval due to the English Civil War. By some nifty manoeuvring the Compton family managed to stay on the right side of however held power. Had they not done so they would have been attainted and their lands sequestrated.

Hon Henry Compton matriculated at Oxford University. He was at the Queen’s College. This college now bears a statute of his pupil Queen Anne. Oxford was then a drab place. The English Civil War was just over. The Parliamentarians had won and the king had been executed. His son Charles II was in exile.. The British Isles were ruled by Oliver Cromwell. Oxford University had taken the side of the king against Parliament and was made to suffer for it.

Hon Compton went down from Oxford without taking a degree.

Hon  Compton became a soldier and served with distinction. He then spent some years travelling on the Continent. This was the grand tour.

In 1660 England restored her monarchy. King Charles II was welcomed back. Hon Compton returned to England. He gained a commission in a cavalry regiment. He was appointed cornet which is a junior officer.

Hon Compton later went to Cambridge where he was awarded a Doctorate of Divinity. (DD). Henry Compton was then ordained a priest in the Church of England.

Hon Compton was granted some lucrative livings. A living meant a parish where he had to minister to the spiritual needs of the parishoners in return for being provided with a stipend and house. The income of Anglican priests varied hugely according to the parish. Some parishes provided very handsome livings indeed. In other parishes the clergy could barely get by. The Church of England was flagrantly nepotistic. Being the son of an early Hon Compton had no difficulty in being made incumbent of a parish that gave him an excellent salary. He first of all served as priest of Cottenham parish. Later he was moved to Witney in Oxfordshire. Incidentally Witney is where David Cameron was Member of Parliament centuries later. Witney is in the diocese of Oxford so Hon Compton was under the authority of the Bishop of Oxford.

Hon Compton was appointed Bishop of Oxford in 1874. Every bishop has a cathedral in his diocese. Each cathedral contains a ‘cathedra’ or throne for the bishop.

There were quite a few Dissenters in his diocese. A Dissenter was someone who is a Protestant but outside the Church of England. For example, they were Baptists, Presbyterians and Quakers. The Church of England was the church as by law established. The law discriminated against those who were outside the Church of England. Bishop Compton was notable for being indulgent towards Dissenters.

Hon Compton was then appointed Dean of the Chapel Royal in London. The Chapel Royal is just across the street from St James’ Palace. St James’ Palace was the official residence of the English Royal Family and not Buckingham Palace which did not exist at the time. The Chapel Royal was where Charles II and his family worshipped. Bishop Compton had to neglect his duties in Oxford in order to lead worship in London much of the time.

After a year he was transferred to the See of London. The ‘see’ in this case is derived from the Latin ‘sede’ meaning ‘seat’. Compton occupied the bishop’s throne in London.

King James II was married to Mary of Modena.

In June 1688 a son was born to James II. Some disbelieved that the baby was the child of the king and queen. It was noised that the infant was born to another couple and was smuggled into the royal bedchamber in a warming pan.

Seven eminent men signed the Invitation to William. This document asked that William of Orange come to England to safeguard the liberties of the country and to investigate the rumour that the baby claimed by Mary of Modena was not born to her at all. Compton was one of those who signed this Invitation to William. They were to become known as the Immortal Seven.

Henry Compton was famous for being tutor to Queen Anne.

Compton died in 1713.

Many Britons like to sneer at Germany and other continental countries for having had Nazi or fascist governments. However, the United Kingdom also had fascist tendencies which spread far beyond the British Union of Fascists. It is high time that people in the United Kingdom faced up to the considerable support for fascism that existed at all levels of British society. Such support was that of a minority but not a tiny one.

 

Early 1920s

 

Immediately after the First World War there were several fascist groupsucles. As Henry Hemming wrote fascism seemed to be ‘conservatism with knobs on.’ British fascism at first eschewed the socialist rhetoric that was found in continental fascist movements.

 

The BUF

 

A one time Tory and then a Labour MP Sir Oswald Mosley was a man of the most exceptional talents. Tall, athletic, debonair with matinee movie idol looks this former army officer and champion fencer was blessed with a magnificent oratorical ability. Yet by the 1930s his vociferation was anti-Jewish and anti-democratic. Mosley founded his own political party – the British Union of Fascists. He later appended ‘a and National Socialists’ to its name. Yet it was known as the BUF and not the BUFNS.

Sir Oswald was a welcome guest at many a country house weekend. As a baronet educated at Winchester and Sandhurst he had impeccable establishment credentials.

Mosley’s Blackshirts stomped around chanting ‘We are going to get rid of the Yids’. Their anti-Semitic bile alarmed many people.

Establishment support

 

The BUF enjoyed considerable admiration from a segment of the British upper class. Unfortunately, the British Isles, particularly England, has a long and despicable history of anti-Semitism. That is not to say that most Englishmen were ever anti-Semitic. However, there was a considerable number of people who were virulently anti-Semitic and the 1930s was no exception. England was one of the first European countries to expel the Jewish community in 1290. Prior to that several large scale pogroms occurred in England.

Edward VIII’s fascist tendencies are amply documented. In 2016 footage emerged of the king encouraging his niece Elizabeth II to give the sieg heil salute when she was a little girl. In Edward VIII’s autobiography ‘A King’s Story’ he expatiated on his loathing for democracy. When Edward VIII was king he attended the Trooping of the Colour that June. For the first and last time a speech was made at this military parade. The king spoke of his love of peace and assured his hearers that a soldier’s peacetime service was every iota as glorious as wartime service. The monarch may have been actuated by an entirely laudable desire to maintain peace. But there could be a less morally uplifting motive that actuated him: that he was an ardent Nazi.

You might believe that at least Churchill was a day one abominator of fascism. You would be dead wrong. We often read of Churchill being a contmner of Mussolini and recognizing him for the poltroon that he was. Yet in Winston Churchill went to Italy in the 1920s to address a fascist rally. He was effusive about Benito Amilcare Mussolini ‘he is a great lawgiver.’ He assured the blackshirts ‘If I were an Italian I would be amongst you.’

Winston Churchill also spoke approvingly of Hitler at times. In his book Great Contemporaries he waxed lyrical about Der Fuhrer.

The Marquess of Tweedsmuir was another virulent anti-Semite. He is better known as the author John Buchan. Buchan’s Judeophobia did not stop him being elevated to the peerage and indeed appointed Governor-General of Canada.

The Conservative Party had more than a flirtation with fascism. You might assume that Liberals would have no truck with fascism since it is the antithesis of their philosophy. Once again you would be laboring under a misapprehension if you believed that. David Lloyd George, the former Liberal Prime Minister, spent the 1930s publicly expressing his approval of Nazism.

There were a number of white supremacist groups in the UK besides the BUF. Among them were the British People’s Party, the Right Club, the Nordic League and the Anglo-German Friendship League.

The Duke of Hamilton was a member of the Anglo-German Friendship League. Small wonder that Rudolf Hess came to visit him in 1941 with a view to concluding peace with the British Empire.

John Amery, son of a Tory cabinet minister, was an outspoken supporter of Hitler. He went to Spain to fight for the Nationalists.  After the war he stood trial for high treason. After instantly pleading guilty he was sentenced to hang. He was an odd bod by never diagnosed as mentally ill. Nonetheless his brother the Conservative MP Leo Amery contrived to save his brother with the bogus excuse of John Amery suffering from derangement of mind. It did not work and Amery was treated to an appointment with Albert Pierrepoint.

The Marquess of Londonderry was a lynchpin of the fascist establishment in the British Isles. He was an ardent appeaser of the Third Reich. This was not out of a perhaps misguided desire to avoid war. That could have been honourable. It was owing to a deep seated admiration for the Third Reich.

Nancy Astor was the first woman to take her seat in the House of Commons. She was also a zealous advocate of giving the Third Reich everything it wanted.

Edward VIII was an avid fan of Nazism. He passed secrets to Berlin in 1936. His paramour Mrs Simpson was said to be the bedfellow of Joachim Ribbentrop who at that time was the German ambassador to the Court of St James. The king’s passionate Nazism was so perturbing that the establishment had to engineer and excuse to give him the heave-ho. He obliged them by his harebrained scheme to marry a twice divorced commoner who appeared to be barren. Once the Duke of Windsor wed where was his first foreign trip? He visited the Third Reich where he was received with every consideration. The Nazi Party could not have been happier to have him as their guest. The duke and duchess even visited  concentration camp!

 

Cordiality with Italy

Through the 1920s Italian troops committed several major massacres in Libya. The news of these crimes against humanity in Tripolitania and Cyrenaica reached the ears of the British forces in Egypt. London chose to keep shtum on the issue. Why upset our Italian friends over something as petty as the lives of several thousand Bedouin?

Long after Benito Mussolini became Prime Minister of Italy the UK strove to maintain an alliance with Italy. In 1935 the United Kingdom formed the Stresa Front with Fascist Italy and France. Though the Italian Army was armed with weapons half a century old, the Italian Air Force was puny the Italian Navy was formidable. The Royal Navy was chary about testing its mettle against the Italians in the Mediterranean. When it came to the Battle of Cape Taranto it is said that British only won due to radar.

If fascism was so objectionable in principle why one earth London take such pains to be an ally of Italy? In October 1935 Italy invaded Abyssinia. This was despite Italy and Abyssinia both being members of the League of Nations. International disputes were supposed to be resolved via the League. Italy treated the League as literally irrelevant to this issue. London did not take firm action against Rome for this flagrant violation of the covenant of the League. Moreover, Italy was a signatory of the Kellogg-Briand Pact i.e. it has explicitly renounced war as an instrument of policy. After generously offering Mussolini two-thirds of Abyssinia (an offer he rebuffed) the UK eventually recognized Italian jurisdiction over the whole of Abyssinia as lawful.

During the war

Once the Second World War began fascist activity in the United Kingdom did not cease. The BUF was not banned until 1940. In a sense it is admirable that the UK afforded civil liberty to even the worst of its citizens even in wartime. However, there came a moment when self-preservation obligated His Majesty’s Government to abridge liberty temporarily.

All through the war there were attempts to negotiate peace with the Third Reich. To some extent this is laudable since ending the war would have saved millions of lives on all sides. The Duke of Hamilton was one of those British peers who published a letter in a newspaper calling for a parley with Berlin in 1940. As there seemed to be little chance of ever defeating the Third Reich there was a compelling logic to his case. Without the Soviet Union the UK would never have beaten the Third Reich – not in a 100 years. In the end the British contributed only 5% of the forces fighting the Third Reich.

However, some of the bids to reach an accommodation were not actuated by humanitarianism. Some of the crypto-fascist circles that had frolicked with the Nazis in the 1930s were unseemly in their eagerness to be helpful to the Nazis even in the 1940s.

The Duke of Windsor (the sometime King Edward VIII) was actively pro-Nazi even during the conflict. He was a staff officer in Paris in 1940 and passed on secret intelligence to the Third Reich. Anyone else would have been hanged with this. But snobbery being what it is he escaped with a ticking off. As Allied defences crumbled other Britishers fled to the English Channel. He was the only one who headed to the south. After dithering the duke and duchess crossed into Franco’s Spain where they were received with the greatest possible consideration. His Royal Highness eventually shifted to Portugal. There he remained in contact with agents of the Reich. The duke requested that his property on la Cote d’Azure named Chateau de la Croe be safeguarded from burglary and vandalism. The Germans were only to happy to oblige. They posted soldiers around the walls and assured the duke that his property would not be injured. For once Hitler was as good as his word. He wished to remain in the good graces of the erstwhile king. The ex-king could prove more than useful to the National Socialist cause.

The former Edward VIII was later dispatched to the Bahamas as Governor-General. The one time monarch had absorbed the negrophobic attitudes that were commonplace amongst his race in that epoch. HRH scorned the country as ‘a very third rate colony.’ The Duke of Windsor cheered himself up by befriending a Swedish multimillionaire named Axel Wenner-Gren. Wenner-Gren was a red hot Nazi despite being from a neutral country. Wenner-Gren acted as a go between for the duke and the Third Reich.

British intelligence was in touch with anti-Nazi resistance in Germany during the war. Those who were in contact with London tended to be Germans of the upper class and aristocratic type. These men heartily agreed with Hitler on certain issues. But if they were to overthrow him and make peace with the West what concessions would the West offer? These plotters wanted to win over waverers in Germany. What would the British say to convince neutrals in Germany that ousting the Nazis was the best way forward? The German resistance wanted to retain western Poland and all of Czechia. Adam von Trott zu Solz is often held up as a shining example of an enlightened German who gallantly resisted the National Socialists. But this Rhodes scholar also insisted on retaining the eastern domains conquered in 1938-39. Even Germans of moderate opinion tended to deny the legitimacy of Poland and Czechoslovakia.

There was some correspondence between the royal family and Germany during the war that was highly embarrassing. Anthony Blunt was sent to retrieve it in 1945.

At the end of the war the United Kingdom was very eager to see Mussolini summarily executed. This did not happen to any leading German. Why was the UK so adamant that Benito Amilcare be killed straightaway? It is surmised that London had been in secret contact with him at some point during the war offering him the chance to continue his fascist regime in return for becoming neutral. The British found this acutely embarrassing and wanted to silence Mussolini before he could spill the beans.

After the war

Some Nazi war criminals found safe havens in the United Kingdom. Others founds comfortable berths in dominions such as South Africa.

In 1955 NATO decided that the Federal Republic of Germany must have its army restored. NATO propagated the myth of the clean Wehrmacht. That is to say that the Wehrmacht had a good war record. It was pretended that the Wehrmacht had fought ethically – only slaying combatants in combat and not killing them after surrender. The numerous huge scale massacres perpetrated by the Wehrmacht were laid at the feet of the SS. To be sure the SS committed countless large-scale atrocities. However, the Wehrmacht was also culpable.

Conclusion

Nothing in this article should be construed as implying that most British people were Nazis or close to it. However, a considerable minority has sympathies in a Nazi direction. This was especially so amongst the upper orders.

The Reverend David Johnson, who has died aged 66, was a priest of the Church of England the like of whom may never be seen again. He was keen of mind and sharp of wit; but he was also possessed of an eccentricity which led some to revere him as an institution and others to opine that he ought to be confined to one.

Johnson’s gifts as public speaker and raconteur were evident in adolescence when he was one of a team which won a national schools’ debating competition. On going up to Cambridge he set his sights on becoming president of the Cambridge Union debating society, an ambition he achieved for the Easter Term of 1976.

He used his time at Cambridge to hone his skills as a prankster, or at least to persuade others to put his ideas into effect. These included marking the visit of Archbishop Coggan to Selwyn College by hanging the organ scholar’s underwear on a washing line between the west towers of the chapel; and, more memorably, a mock academic procession through the streets of the city for “The Immersion of the High Professor” in the River Cam.

Publicised on posters replicating official proctorial notices, the exercise achieved Johnson’s aim of persuading a significant number of tourists to stand on one leg as the “High Professor” (alias Father James Owen of Little St Mary’s Church) dipped his toe ceremoniously in the water.

Johnson’s fondness for practical jokes attracted national attention with the one-off publication in September 1981 of “Not The Church Times”, a facsimile of the Anglican newspaper, complete with almost credible advertisements and errata.

The front page reported on the enthronement of the new Bishop of London, Graham Leonard, as though the event was on a scale akin to the wedding of Prince Charles and Lady Diana Spencer.

In 1994 Johnson collaborated with the priest-author Toby Forward to send spoof letters to church dignitaries on a variety of subjects, ranging from requests for tickets to the races or the details of the recipient’s toupee makers, to the possibility of installing a monument to the Cumberland sausage in Carlisle Cathedral.

Their targets included the Rt Rev Alec Graham, then Bishop of Newcastle, whom the pair had heard was “a first-rate Tory”. Perhaps, they suggested, he might lead a new Right-wing leather-clad boys’ group “liberated from the restricted old-fashioned sexual morality which causes such unnecessary gossip”.

The Bishop replied that, alas, he did not have much to do with youth organisations and suggested they try someone with a more popular image: “But you are certainly right about my political views.”

The letters of inquiry and replies were published in a book, The Spiritual Quest of Francis Wagstaffe. It was described by Johnson’s own bishop as “contemptible”, but the profits were shared with a charity for the young homeless.

David William Johnson was born on December 5 1953, the son of a civil servant. Educated locally at Ponteland on the outskirts of Newcastle upon Tyne, Johnson proudly claimed that his greatest childhood achievement was winning the Ponteland Sunday School’s Twist-and-Shout competition, more by virtue of his ability to shout rather than to twist.

He went up to read Theology at Selwyn College, Cambridge, before training for Holy Orders at Ripon College, Cuddesdon. It was typical of his style as a bon viveur that he arranged for the ordinands’ bar, hitherto a beer barrel on a trolley, to be replaced by a cocktail cabinet in the college common room.

He was ordained in 1978 to a curacy at St Etheldreda’s, Fulham, where it soon became apparent that all was not well. Following his ordination to the priesthood a year later, Johnson presided at Holy Communion for the first time, an occasion which he choreographed with ceremonial and vestments so ornate as to make the Vatican seem low church by comparison. Significantly, his training incumbent did not attend the occasion.

Nevertheless Johnson remained in Fulham until 1982, when he took up a five-year post as Communications Secretary of the Church of England Board of Mission and Unity.

Based in Church House, Westminster, Johnson, who was always generous in sharing his talents, made good use of his networking abilities. Ecumenical dignitaries visiting from abroad were charmed to be greeted with a hamper from Fortnum and Mason. It is said that on one occasion, when a French Catholic bishop needed to return home in a hurry, Johnson used his contacts in the military to fly him back.

During this time, he also served for three years as a Priest-Vicar (Honorary Minor Canon) at Westminster Abbey. Life in central London offered Johnson many opportunities for socialising, which he took up with alacrity.

He frequented, among other venues, the Chelsea Arts Club, where he staged what he publicised as “A Fathers’ Day Fuddle”. Chaired by Bishop Bill Westwood, the cabaret was performed entirely by Fathers in the ecclesiastical sense.

As the television critic of the Church Times, Johnson ranged further than one might have expected for that newspaper, but his comments were always sharp and entertaining. On the occasions when he failed to submit copy, the Church Times explained to its readers that “David Johnson is unwell.”

In 1987 Johnson left London to become Rector of Gilmorton with Peatling Parva in the diocese of Leicester. Unfortunately, while Johnson’s ability to reduce an argument and its proponent to the ridiculous within a couple of sentences might have enhanced his performance in the debating chamber and amused his peers, he did not always find it easy to summon the pastoral tact and patience required in rural ministry.

Deeply unhappy, he was rescued after four years by Bill Westwood, by now Bishop of Peterborough, and installed as Rector of Cogenhoe and other villages in Northamptonshire.

Sadly, this move to another rural benefice proved if anything even more disastrous, leading to a severe breakdown of pastoral relationships in the villages. Johnson even found himself banned from a village pub which he had patronised assiduously. His mental and physical condition was in decline to the point where Bishop Westwood arranged for him to retire early on health grounds.

Johnson settled in Oxford. With typical perversity he named his house “Seaview Cottage”. His telephone answering machine would inform callers that he was either all at sea or out with the tide.

Pottering about in a Latin cassock and shovel hat, he became a familiar feature of life in the city and, for a while, at the Oxford Union, of which, by virtue of his past role at Cambridge, he was an honorary member.

A frequent writer of letters to newspapers, in 2005, apropos a Telegraph reader’s observation that “giving gin to wasps causes them to take off in ever-decreasing circles before collapsing in a flower bed”, he wrote: “I have found the same treatment works equally well on Oxford undergraduates.”

But as Johnson’s health further deteriorated, with one or more strokes, he had to move into residential care.

David Johnson was unmarried.

The Reverend David Johnson, born December 5 1953, died April 22 2020.

Sisi is sissy

 

President Sisi has ruled Egypt since 2014. The former general is the latest in an almost unbroken line of Egyptian military dictators. Not all military dictators are bad especially when one considers the alternative. However, Sisi has little to recommend him.

In Egypt’s 5 000 year history it has had one fair election. That was won by the Muslim Brotherhood. Love them or loath them – this party won fair and square. Mohammed Morsi became President of Egypt in 2013.

Egypt’s only ever democratic president faced an exceptionally challenging situation. The economy was screaming. Tourism – a vital source of revenue – had all but evaporated after the Arab Spring of 2011. The country had massive unemployment. The population explosion had made it virtually impossible to create enough jobs. Wage compression had made the middle class  declasse – driving them into working class status and the working class were demoted into abject penury. If the price of bread rose a few cents that sparked riots. This price rise was the difference between life and death for many people. Decades of peculation and embezzlement by the Mubarak regime had ruined civil society. People had no faith in public institutions such as the courts, the police, the armed forces and the civil service.

People blame Morsi for all that went wrong on his watch. This is unfair. No president has complete control. But in particular Morsi’s wings were clipped. Despite civilian rule having been introduced in January 2011 the army still arrested people as well as the police. Courts martial still tried civilians.

What was so bad about Morsi? People accused him of having an Islamist agenda. He was not exactly Osama Bin Laden. He called for the maintenance of peace with Israel. Morsi did not outlaw alcohol. He did not introduce stricter clothing laws. Entertainment was not prohibited. He did very little to move the country in a more puritanical direction. Morsi was willing to shake hands with women. Islamic fundamentalists do not do this. He had also spent some years studying in the United States.

There were some terrorist attacks on Coptic Christians whilst he was president. This is no wise implicates the president. That would be like saying that Putin set off all the bombs that ever went off in Moscow.

People had been oppressed under the military dictatorship that they yearned for better. Hopes for an improving situation were too strong. The expectations of higher living standards in the short term were unrealistic.

Some of Morsi’s acolytes said some worrying things. A few wanted to reduce female emancipation or suggested making the Copts have dhimmi status and pay jizya. But these were nutcases within the party. No party should be judged by its lunatic fringe.

By the summer of 2014 there was serious disorder. Who benefitted? It was certainly not the Muslim Brotherhood. Did the army want it this way? They were itching to get back into power. Disorder provided them with the excuse to launch a putsch. A knot of reactionary militarists hatched a plot.

The military top brass gave Morsi a few days to bring the situation under control or they would remove him by force. It was an impossible task especially as the generals refused to help him. Morsi was overthrown in a military coup. He was given a flagrantly unfair trial. The military kangaroo court convicted him on trumped up charges. Morsi was awarded life imprisonment. He died in prison.

Abdel Fattah El Sisi was then selected by a coterie of generals to be their front man. Sisi was installed as interim president. He called an election.

An army spokesman informed the public that the poll would be ‘’one million per cent democratic.’’ The need to make such a ludicrous claim speaks for itself. It is surprising that Sisi did not announce that he had won 1 000 000 % of the vote!

Sisi is clean shaved which in Egypt hints at his being relatively secular. However, his attitudes belie his image. His beliefs are not dissimilar to Morsi’s on religious issues. Just because Morsi was hirsute does not mean he was ultra-conservative. Sisi is a bland control freak. Morsi was more cosmopolitan than Sisi. Morsi at least spoke fluent English.

There was a massacre of hundreds of people by Sisi’s ‘’security forces.’’ The Rabaa Massacre was carried out by his men. Even the Egyptian Government admits that over 600 civilians were killed. They claim that some police officers were killed too. The regime cannot get its story straight on how many police were slain. It is anywhere between 8 and 43. That is quite a discrepancy. If some policemen were killed is not possible that some were accidentally killed by other policemen? Some undercover policemen may have been in the crowd. If protesters used force against the police it was surely in self-defence. They would not use it pre-emptively. The police would use the slightest excuse to slaughter hundreds of people. Unbiased sources such as Human Rights Watch say that the true death toll is over 1 000.

The people who were murdered were demonstrating as is their right under the Egyptian Constitution. Remember Sisi said he wants to uphold people’s rights. Which rights? The right to be murdered with impunity?

Sisi is remorseless about this wanton butchery. This massacre is far worse than anything that ISIS or Al Qa’eda has done in Egypt.

The Al Rabaa Massacre took place AFTER Morsi’s ouster. Why did Sisi say he had to overthrow Morsi? To prevent violence. No, the coup was so Sisi could commit violence.

As Sisi’s religious beliefs are akin to Morsi’s why did he overthrow him? Sisi presumably hates democracy. Moreover, Sisi and his military cronies had been ripping off the public for decades. They wanted to continue. They did not want to be held to account.

Egypt is a deeply dysfunctional country. The military is about the only institution that actually works. The officer corps have lorded it over the civilian population for decades. Every president since the overthrow of the monarchy has been a military man even if he wore a civilian suit as president. The top brass has been creaming off the budget since 1954.

In fine old style Sisi has appointed his sons to high positions for which they are unfit. One of head of Mukhabarat. That makes him in effect witchfinder general. His job is to smell out human rights activists and call them terrorists.

President Sisi has presided over grossly unfair trials. At a single trial over 500 people were sentenced to death for murder. The judges are the lapdogs of the regime.

There is almost no freedom of expression in Egypt. Undercover police officers are still arresting dissidents. They are still entrapping gays online. Torture is widely used as many human rights organisations have documented.

The Egyptian Government co-operates with Israel on eliminating their enemies. Sisi moronically admitted this in an interview on American TV. He asked for that statement to be edited out. Of course, the TV channel went with this scoop. Assisting Israel is unacceptable to Egyptian public opinion. The Palestinian cause has been abandoned.

Sisi was asked why he oppressed his people. He claimed his opponents want to deprive people of their rights. In fact Sisi allows his people almost no rights.

Egypt has backed the Libyan National Army (LNA). The LNA is rebelling against the Government of Libya. So much for Sisi represented stability. He is now threatening to invade a neighbour which does his country no harm.

Someone who fights illegally against his own government is generally regarded as a terrorist. Yet Sisi supports the LNA who do just this. By contrast, those who are peaceful and law abiding dissidents in his own country are called terrorists. Egyptian Law grants people all the rights you might want. But the government simply flagrantly breaks its own laws.

Sisi has not made the country more secular. A woman was convicted for wearing a dress that showed her lower legs! A woman who ate a banana suggestively on television and said having a child outside wedlock was fine was convicted of outraging public decency. A man can divorce his wife by telling her ‘’I divorce thee’’ thrice. Egypt is not as bad as Saudi Arabia. But neither it a free country.

General Sisi is not anti-Christian. That is one of the few things which can be said in his defence. But the same was true of Morsi.

Jacques Duhan was the tutor of Frederick the Great. Note that Jacques Duhan is pronounced ” Zhak     do – AN”

Jacques Duhan was born in  1685. His birthplace was Jandun which is the district of France called Champagne. That is where champagne was first made. The name of his home town is the reason why ‘Jandun’ i sometimes put as part of his surname. Duhan was born into a Huguenot family that meant a Protestant one. About 85% of the French population was Roman Catholic. The Huguenots made up the remainder of the people. Duhan was unlucky enough to be born in the year of the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes. This meant a century of relative tolerance for Protestantism came to an end. The Huguenots were forbidden to leave the country but about two-thirds of them did so.  The King of France at the time, Louis XIV, had been persuaded to discriminate against the Protestant minority..

Duhan’s father had been secretary to the Duke of Turenne. The Duke of Turenne was a Hugenot and one of France’s most outstanding generals. Up until the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes the Huguenots had been among France’s most talented and courageous military commanders.

Duhan’s family emigrated to escape persecution. Many Huguenots moved to the Netherlands, Great Britain, Ireland and even South Africa. The Duhan family moved to Prussia which was a Protestant state. Prussia welcomed Hugenot refugees especially if they had military experience. The family settle din the city of Brandenburg in Germany. Brandenburg was in a state called Prussia. Germany was not then a united country. Germany was a smorgasbord of 360 states. Some were large and powerful. Others were puny. Most were somewhere in between. Prussia was one of a bigger and more important states. Prussia was starting to be known for military prowess. Brandenburg lies in north-east Germany. In those days Brandenburg was close to the centre of Germany since Germany extended as far east as Kaliningrad (then named Konigsberg).

The Duhan family spoke French at home. Duhan was home schooled for a while. He learnt German informally from his neighbours. His father Philippe was a secretary to the Elector of Brandenburg. Brandbenburg was a city and the state of Brandenburg soon became known as Prussia.

Jacques went to College Francais in Berlin. He later enlisted in the Prussian Army.

Later Duhan taught at College Francais des Hugenots in Berlin. He then worked as a tutor for the son of the Count of Dohna. The boy, Albert-Christophe, was very fond of him.

He made a superb soldier. He went to the Siege of Stralsund in 1715 with his pupil. It may seem odd that parents ordered their child to be taken to see a siege! At the Siege of Starlsund his valour was so outstanding that he came to the attention of the King of Prussia: Friedrich Wilhelm I. Note that Prussian kings count Friedrich, Friedrich Wilhlem and Wilhlem as three different names.

Duhan was appointed tutor to king’s son in 1716. The little prince was then only four years of age. The boy was named Friedrich. He later was ascended the Throne and his martial feats made him known to history as ”Frederick the Great”.  In terms of regnal numbers he was Friedrich II. Duhan was to be civil tutor to the crown prince. There was a separate tutor for scholarly matters. The king then insisted that his heir be taught a stripped down curriculum. The boy had no need of poetry, philosophy or such impractical and effete subjects. Friedrich was to do a minimum of Latin. In those days someone could not avoid doing at least a little Latin if he was to be considered educated at all.

Friedrich Wilhelm wanted his son to be brought up in an ordinary way. He was wary of spoiling his child or having him concentrate on subjects that turned him into a day dreamer. The boy must be hardened. He wanted his tutors to be tough on the prince so he could be turned into a worthy commander-in-chief. Friedrich Wilhelm was known as ”The Soldier-King” with good reason.

Duhan was to concentrate on Religious Studies, military affairs and Modern History. By modern he meant the last 100 years.  He must emphasise inter-state relations in particular.

Friedrich Wilhelm I was eager to gain from France’s military know-how but he was not so keen on French culture. French was the language of the pan-European elite. Friedrich Wilhelm reluctantly spoke French in diplomatic situations because that was what one did. He realised that his son had to speak fluent French in order to be taken seriously by the other crowned heads. He did not want his son to have a confection for French culture. The boy must be able to speak and read French fluently but he was not to waste his time with poetry and prose.

Despite the king’s orders Duhan regarded his duty as being to his pupil. He purchased over 3 000 books for the prince. Most of these were in French. He taught him French Literature as well as Greek and Latin. Friedrich developed a taste for French culture. Duhan even procured French raiments for his pupil. Much of this contraband was kept in Schlossfreiheit (”Freedom Castle”).

In 1727 Friedrich wrote to Duhan:

 

”            Mon cher Duhan,

Je vous promets que, quand j’aurai mon propre argent en main, je vous donnerai annuellement deux mille quatre cents écus par an, et je vous aimerai toujours encore un peu plus qu’à cette heure, s’il m’est possible  ”

(”My Dear Duhan, / I promise you that when I have my own money in hand I will give you 2 400 ecus annnually and I will love you always more than a little and more than now if that is possible.”)

Friedrich wanted to escape his tyrannical father. In 1730 he tried to leave the realm but was caught. The king discovered that Duhan had been persistently disobeying his instructions. Duhan was sacked after 12 years of service. He was banished to Memel on the Baltic Sea. He was not provided with a pension because he had angered the monarch. Duhan devoted his time to writing histories of Prussia.

As Friedrich was a soldier and had tried to run away to the United Kingdom he was charged with treason. The king threatened his firstborn with the death penalty! In the end the boy was not sentenced to death. But his friend Katte who had tried to flee with him was beheaded and Friedrich forced to watch. Friedrich was locked up in comfort by his father for his insubordination. The prince pleaded with the Austrian ambassador Seckendorff to help his former tutor. The Austrians were keen to be in the good graces of the future monarch. After two years father and son were reconciled. Friedrich was let out of his luxurious prison. He immediately had his tutor freed from exile. He was given a lucrative post as a librarian in Brunswick. They therefore surreptitiously paid a pension to the penniless Duhan.

Duhan also worked as a secret councilor of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs n Berlin.

Friedrich Wilhelm I died. His son succeeded him. Duhan was made director of an academy. He was given many honours such as been initiated into the Prussian Academy of Sciences.

Freidrich II often wrote to Duhan signing off ”Your very affectionate and eternal friend, Frederic”

Here is a poem the king composed for his tutor:

”         Je vous dois tout, seigneur, il faut que je l’avoue;

Et d’un peu de vertu si l’Europe me loue,

C’est à vous, cher Duhan, à vous que je la dois   ”

(I owe you all, master, I must avow that/ And a little but of virtue if Europe praises me/ It is to you dear Duhan that I owe it.”)

It was due to Duhan that the king was able to write the most beautiful French. He preferred French to his own language. He even composed long poems in letters to his friends such as Monsieur Jordan.

Here is an example from 1741. Friedrich II found time to write this while on campaign!

Déjà vous tremblez à Breslau,

Lorsque nous marchons à Grottkau,

Et les siéges et les batailles

Vous attendrissent les entrailles.

En un mot, paisible Jordan,

Jamais aucun lièvre en son gîte

Ne s’apprête à courir si vite

Que vous, quand vous levez le camp.

Mais raisonnons, je vous en prie.

Que devient donc en ce moment

Cette grave philosophie

Dont vous nous parlez si souvent,

Et ce stoïcisme insolent

Qui vous fait mépriser la vie

Quand le danger n’est pas présent?

Le canon gronde, et son tonnerre

<127>Ébranle le fond de la terre;

Il tombe une grêle de fer,

Le plomb vole et remplit tout l’air,

Et la mort qu’enfante la guerre

Ouvre un gouffre tel qu’un enfer.

Il sort une flamme infernale

De cette gueule triomphale,

Oui porte la destruction.

Ici, c’est le feu de Bellone,

Et, plus bas, le glaive moissonne

Sans pitié, sans compassion.

Tel qui, dans le sein de la flamme.

De la mort, de mille dangers,

Garde la tranquillité d’âme

Égale aux objets étrangers

Mérite en effet l’apostrophe

De vrai sage et de philosophe;

Les autres sont des imposteurs.

Voyez donc, messieurs les auteurs,

Qu’elle est grande, la différence

Du solide et de l’apparence,

Combien les dehors imposteurs

Sont différents de l’évidence.

Dans vos studieuses erreurs,

Au fond d’une bibliothèque,

Vous faites très-bien les docteurs.

De votre valeur intrinsèque

Le danger peut nous éclaircir;

Il paraît, on vous voit courir.

Nous, plus forts d’esprit que ces sages.

Nous opposons à ces orages

Le flegme et l’intrépidité.

Que tout périsse et se confonde,

Que tout se bouleverse au monde.

Rien n’ébranle ma fermeté.

 

All through the Second Silesian War the two corresponded.

For example on 28 November 1745 he began a letter to Duhan:

” Mon cher Duhan,

Dieu merci, votre lettre m’est venue comme j’ai fini mon expédition, après avoir rechassé le prince Charles entièrement de la Lusace, et lui avoir pris trois magasins….”

(”My Dear Duhan/ Thank God that your letter came to me as I finished my campaign, having chased Prince Charles entirely away from Lusace where he had taken three magazines [stores of gunpowder]”).

Notice that he addresses his former tutor with the respectful ”vous” and not the informal ”tu”.

The king signed off:

”   Adieu, cher ami; ne m’oubliez point, et aimez-moi un peu.  Frederic ”

(”Goodbye dear friend, don’t forget me and love me a little. Frederic”)

Notice how he used the French language version of his name.

Duhan wrote back two days later.

”Les habitants de Berlin ont d’abord et machinalement eu peur à la vue des calamités auxquelles la guerre pouvait les exposer. Depuis cela, la considération des victoires précédentes et de toute la conduite de V. M. leur a raffermi le courage, et enfin les nouveaux succès de vos armes -a ont achevé de tranquilliser les esprits. 

Poursuivez seulement vos desseins, Sire; forcez vos ennemis à demander la paix. Vous reposant sur la providence divine, et lui rendant hommage de vos prospérités, vous êtes, sans contredit, le plus accompli des rois.”

( ” The inhabitants of Berlin first of all shook with fear in regard of the calamities to which war could expose them. Then, in consideration of the earlier victories all of which were led by Your Majesty they reaffirmed their courage and in the end the new success of your arms have achieving the calming of their spirits.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                 Follow only your arts. Highness, force your enemies to ask for peace. You shall trust in divine providence and render homage to him for your prosperity, you are, without contradiction, the most accomplished of kings. ”

Friedrich went on to fight against France but he never regarded the French as in any sense inferior. He always maintained a reverence for French culture. He became a dear friend of the French philosopher Voltaire. He also wrote Anti-Machiavel which was a refutation of The Prince by Niccolo Machiavelli. Naturally, the king wrote his book in French.

Duhan died in  1746.

The king wrote to Duhan’s widow to commiserate. He also provided liberally for his tutors sons and daughters. The king remained in contact with the family for the rest of his life.

Eric Anderson was born in Edinburgh in 1936. His family were kilt makers.

His real name is William Eric Kinloch Anderson. Despite this he was always known by his middle name ”Eric.” He is the only subject of this book to still be a going concern.

Anderson attended George Watson’s College. This is one of Edinburgh’s leading schools. He was raised as a member of the Church of Scotland. He then attended the University of St Andrew’s. This is one of North Britain’s four old universities. The others being Edinburgh, Glasgow and Aberdeen. He read English and graduated with a first class Master of Arts. Note that the four old Scottish universities award Masters’ degrees as undergraduate degrees because all their undergraduate degrees take four years. In contrast English universities usually teach an undergraduate degree in three years (depending on the subject) and the graduates are awarded a Bachelor’s degree. Mr Anderson then enrolled at Balliol College, Oxford. Balliol was founded in 1264 by a Scots nobleman John Balliol. (The founder was the father of a King of Scots who was confusingly also named John Balliol). Balliol retained close links with Scotland. It was known to be the most formidably intellectual of all Oxford colleges. It had gained this daunting reputation in the mid 19th century when a Balliol had a Master named Benjamin Jowett.

The Norrington Table is a table of academic results of Oxford colleges. The Norrington Table derives its name form the don who invented it. It is like a football league table. A college moves up and down from year to year according to the proportion of First Class degrees, 2:1, 2:2s and  Thirds it gains. Balliol has consistently been at or near the top.

Balliol was not only seen as the most outstanding college in academic terms. It was known for its left wing atmosphere. It attracted plenty of undergraduates form Commonwealth countries. Many of these young men were full of radical and anti-imperialist nostra. Anderson seems to have remained aloof from these opinions.

At Balliol Eric Anderson studied for a Master of Letters (M.Litt). His thesis was on the novel of Sir Walter Scott. Scott was an early 19th century poet and prose author. Scott wrote many illustrious historical fictions such as Ivanhoe. He is known for some poems such as Lochinver. Sir Walter Scott helped to organise George IV’s visit to Scotland. He also invented the kilt. Scott is one of the UK’s most popular novelists. He was a romantic right winger. Anderson is suspected of being of the same cast of mind as his literary idol. Scott’s Toryism and neo-feudalism were deeply unfashionable in Balliol around 1960. Scott is commemorated by an enormous monument in the middle of Edinburgh. Balliol always remained close to his heart. In future years when interviewing candidates for teaching posts he would greet them with ”Floreat domulus de Balliolo” (May the little house of Balliol flourish) if the candidate was a Balliol man or woman.

Mr Anderson, as he then was, went into teaching. He accepted a post at Gordonstoun School which is the most northerly public school in the United Kingdom. This is a very new and audacious foundation. It was only set up in 1933. It has enormous grounds and is deep in the countryside. Gordonstoun was founded by a German Jewish refugee named Dr Kurt Hahn. Dr Hahn was deeply influenced by Platonic philosophy. He believed in a holistic education. This was to include sports, camping and community service as well as academic subjects. This school had been attended by Prince Philip of Greece in the 1930s. He was the man who married Elizabeth II. Gordonstoun was laudable in seeking to throw of the snobbery of more established schools. It also did a lot for Germano-British education after the Second World War. Gordonstoun was a copy of Salem which was a school Kurt Hahn had founded in Germany in 1920. Gordonstounians were encouraged to spend a year at Salem. Pupils from Salem were exhorted to spent a year at Gordonstoun. Many people took the chance. Anderson became the housemaster of Prince Charles. This was a weighty responsibility for a relatively young teacher. Whilst at Gordonstoun Anderson married Poppy Mason. They have a daughter and a son.

Later on Anderson moved to Fettes College in Edinburgh. This is one of Scotland’s most splendid schools. There he was housemaster to a budding young actor by the name of Tony Blair. Blair was self-possessed and argumentative. There was no doubting his academic promise or his casuistry.. Blair made a name for himself playing of the the lead roles in R C Sheriff’s play about the First World War Journey’s End. 

Anderson was appointed Headmaster of Abingdon at the very early age of 34. He was an enormous success. He then became headmaster of Shrewsbury. This is one of the Clarendon Nine. In the 1870s Parliament commissioned Lord Clarendon to write a report into the nine leading schools in the kingdom. The Clarendon Nine are still considered the most reputable schools of all.

Anderson acquitted himself well. He was then appointed to the highest office in schooling. He was made Head Master of Eton. Notice that Eton spells this as two separate words: Head Master. Every other school has it as a compound word: headmaster. In 1980 he took over Eton. Eric Anderson was in some respects a daring choice. He had not attended one of the outstanding schools. Nor had he been to Varsity as an undergraduate but only as a post-graduate. He was not an Anglican but a member of the Church of Scotland. Some boys were wont to look down on him. Nevertheless he had handled great responsibility with much aplomb. One of the pupils there was an undersized boy named David Cameron. The most humorous public speaker was a King’s Scholar named Boris Johnson. Anderson had to deal with the growing threat of drug abuse at the time. He was compelled to expel a few boys.

Eric Anderson was awarded an honorary doctorate. He became known as Dr Anderson. Some found this objectionable as only those with a substantive doctorate should use the appellation.

Dr Anderson had no sectarian prejudices. He brought in the first Roman Catholic chaplain to the school since 1558. He appointed a Jesuit named Peter Knott. Father Knott was unusual in that he had served a full military career before taking holy orders. Catholics comprised over 10% of the school.

Eton has a unique system of naming year groups. Boys usually start at Eton aged 13. This is called Year 9 by most British schools. Eton calls this F Block. Next year boys move up to E Block and then D Block, C Block and the final year of school is B Block. Dr Anderson made it his business to teach and English lesson to every class in F Block. He also judged declamation contests. He was a very genuine person. He seemed gauche when addressing large gatherings. He allowed two documentaries about Eton to be made. The better known was was Eton Class of 1991. This was filmed in 1990 which was the 550th anniversary of the school’s foundation.

Anderson retired from Eton in 1994. The very fact he lasted so long stands testament to his terrific success. He had already arranged a berth for himself. He became Rector of Lincoln College, Oxford. Every Oxford college has a head of house. The title of the head of house differs from college to college. Some call it master, some rector, some president and so on. Christ Church calls it dean. This is misleading because in other colleges the dean is the person in charge of discipline.

Some people at Lincoln resented Anderson. He invited old friends to stay all the time. They complained that he used the college as a hotel for his cronies. After six years he retired from that post. The position of Provost of Eton had become vacant. The Provost is the head of the board of governors at Eton. The governors are called Fellows of Eton. The Provost is the supreme authority at Eton. He and the Fellows choose the Head Master. They also have the ability to dismiss the Head Master. They do not involve themselves in the quotidian running of the school. Very major policy decisions are referred to them for approval. There is one Fellow nominated by Oxford University and one by Cambridge University.

Dr Anderson was seen as one of the great and the good. He was made a Knight of the Order of the Thistle. This relates to Scotland. Since he is a knight and not a baronet this title will die with him. He has published a book on his hero Sir Walter Scott. Anderson has been heaped with other honours and sits on various boards.

The War on Hugs: the me too movement and the criminalisation of male heterosexuality

Let’s jump on the bandwagon, women! Somebody asked you out on a date and you declined? That is sexual harassment. You might have flirted beforehand. You might even have liked being asked because it was flattering even though you declined. An accusation of sexual harassment can end the career of a male. Even looking at someone for a moment is harassment. It is preposterous to declare whole sections of the female form to be off limits from one’s gaze even if she is fully clad.

I yearn to burst in twain the galling fetters of feminism. Man is born free but everywhere he is under the feminist lash. Womankind is now largely deprived of the flattery, the generosity and the gentlemanliness that old-fashioned straight males once treated them too. It is a bland, monochrome and joyless world we are building. Cupid’s quiver is empty!

It is noteworthy that while male heterosexuality is under siege homosexuality is actively promoted. I have no beef with same sex relationships. I merely ask for equality. Can straights not have the same rights as gays?

Gay men can harass straights and no one cares. I have been subjected to this. I found it a trifle uncomfortable. I had to stand up for myself. But I would never consider telling the cops. Nor should other consequences flow such as civil action. If only more women had such hardihood.

A female can make advances on a male even if he has not evinced the slenderest desire for her. But we do not have a spate of males crying to heaven for vengeance about this. Perhaps I am not comparing like with like. In the last analysis a woman cannot rape a male.

Men – do not relax at the office party or even at the pub. Do not let your guard down. These are particularly dangerous occasions. One compliment and you are done for. A young swain in his naivete might even essay to plant a peck on a lady’s cheek. Woe betide him!

Nightclubs are minefields. We know that dancing is to some extent a mating to ritual. Provocative clothing and twerking are not remotely sexy. Women are permitted to be flirtatious but males are not. To think this indicates a desire for coquetry is dead wrong. Anything penile is penal!

We have entered a lamentably intolerant phase. Alarmism is in the air. Shrieking headlines predominate. This shrill atmosphere means that the mildest misdemeanour is conflated with the vilest crime. It is all a slippery slope. The public has been told that no incident no matter how trifling can be overlooked. Minnie Driver equated a man exposing himself to a woman with rape. It is just as bad she said. A man showing his penis to a woman who does not want to see it is a contemptible and shameful thing to do. But this pervert is not on a par with a rapist.

This is all how Stanley Cohen described things in ”Moral panics and folk devils”. Even as the incidence of harassment is declining the media and certain demagogues stoke fear. They thrive on fear and hatred. This creates a power structure for authoritarians and do gooders. Statistics are hugely inflated. The severity of wrongdoing is greatly overstated. Anyone who questions this pernicious craze is furiously denounced. People are scared into silence. Unprovable allegations are dredged up from decades ago. The most lurid and unlikely tales are believed without question. The dead can be dishonoured of anyone says that a man flirted.

Note how we are not allowed to ask perfectly reasonable questions about accusations. Anyone who expresses the mildest doubts about an allegation however unlikely is shouted down. The presumption of innocence is turned on its head.

Gloria Steinem is perhaps the prophetess of this movement. She long boasted of aborting her baby. She exposed the shocking fact that men are attracted to Playboy bunny girls. Some men touched these women without permission. How bad was that? Slightly naughty? Or ghastly? It rather depends where. Surely it was a non-story. Her co-evals have mostly gone to their reward. But la Steinem is still indefatigably advocating for the social emasculation of straights. Tens of millions of infants have been immolated her altar to oppression. Her gall and shamelessness in advancing the cause of infanticide is flabbergasting.

When a male is accused of rape or even of sexual harassment he is suspended form his job or political organisation. But this is not enough according to hardline feminists. He must be dismissed immediately! When the President of the Oxford Union was accused of rape some feminists demanded that other people pull out of debates at the Oxford Union. The Union comprises tens of thousands of members. If one of them is accused of a crime they are all adjudged guilty before the defendant’s trial has even begun! The allegation was later retracted. The complainant acknowledge that she had engaged in consensual intercourse with this boy. She should have been sent to prison for twenty years. Perjury and wrongful conviction

We are told that the present assault on liberty is needful since we must extirpate rape. Rape has been unlawful for as long as we have had laws. This is a heinous offence. No right-thinking person can want another to fall prey to this crime. Why on earth should we outlaw flirtation and prevent colleagues dating for this reason? It is as though as any male can rape any female we have to prevent consensual intercourse as much as possible.

We are witnessing the stealthy abolition of male heterosexuality. The straight male is under attack on many fronts. I get the distinct impression that many feminists would prefer that male heterosexuality did not exist.

The war on hugs is protean. It is about prohibiting office raillery on matters amorous. It involves forbidding colleagues from forming an intimate liaison. It also requires lecturers to be prevented from having any intimate relationship with their adult students. It is about unduly broadening the definition of rape to any act of intercourse where the female partook of spirituous liquored aforehand. Lads mags are restricted. Popular erotica is discouraged. In many universities it is banned.

Liberalism started in the 19^th century by reducing restrictions. In the 21^st century it introduces restrictions. The liberal left is addicted to banning things. It has invented tens of thousands of criminal offences. It is lugubrious to reflect that it has sometimes been abetted by the right. Occasionally the feminist agenda has even been actively advanced by supposedly right wing governments. The concertation of left wingers, liberals, feminists and their acolytes in the media and academe has made them a very potent force. They have incessantly bombarded people with feminist propaganda. They have seized control of the English language. Gendered nouns on their way out. Inanities such as waitperson have gained some traction.

These are dangerous and frightening times. Is it the end of flirting as we know it? Do we have to submit a legal letter to pay a compliment. If one feels limerence towards another how can one declare one’s sentiments?

Sexual harassment is not chimerical. What is it? It is repeated unwanted comments or touching. If something happens once it is almost never enough to constitute that. A wink, blowing a kiss or a wolf whistle is mere gallantry or perhaps boorishness. I have never wolf whistled in my life. In Nottingham these whistles are reported to the police. The chief constable wants to know about it. Catching murderers might have been thought more important. But I have clearly got my priorities the wrong way around. The chief constable knows which is the greater crime.

The germ of the anti-harassment movement was a good idea. The road to hell is paved with good intentions. Just as feminism was initially laudable. Females ought to be permitted to own property, to do whatever job they so choose, to vote and so forth. But it has metamorphosed. Good has turned to bad.

Feminism seeks inegalitarianism. It wishes to deny fathers access to children. It seeks to bankrupt men at divorce. It sanctifies abortion. It has anathematised male heterosexuality. It is a peerlessly pernicious creed quite beyond the pale of human tolerance. Is there no end to the wickedry it has wrought?

There have always been lechers. Men who sexually harass women are foolish and disagreeable. It is often accompanied by other disreputabilities such as alcohol abuse. These unpleasant sorts should be given short shrift. They ought to be forgiven if they mend their ways.

Foolish and sometimes ill-intentioned males will sometimes make women feel gauche or offended. This is regrettable. That is the price we pay for a free society. Many would prefer any unfree society.

The me too movement has gone into overdrive. It has extended the notion of harassment too far. It uses a sledgehammer to crack a nut. Sixpenny matters are not treated with severity. People try to go to law over trivialities. Whatever happened to de minimis non curat lex?

If a male asks a female on a date and she says no then that is not harassment. But if he asks her again and again then it is harassment. How many times does it need to be to constitute harassment? That is a moot point. We need a sense of proportion and to avoid jumping to conclusions.

Supposing you have taken a shine to a female colleague. Valentine’s Day is approaching. Do you dare send her a card? If you compose a paean to her serene radiance, her iridescent azure eyes, the tresses of her raven locks, the lilt of her tinkling voice or heaven forfend the curve of her heaving bosom and the tone of her gracile calves you will find yourself out of a job. What is a boy to do? Can you tell her that you only want her for her mind? Is romance dead?

 

People change their minds. Pertinacity can be alluring. Romantic films send mixed signals.

A man Expressing attraction to women is now called misogyny. That is utterly daft. It is the polar opposite of misogyny. No wonder people turn to online dating. But will even that be seen as harassment? Consent does not vitiate the evil nature of harassment so feminists will say. Even if a woman engaged on flirtation or consensual sexual activity some words of behaviour can still be harassment so the feminist Taleban say.

We are being oppressed by rampant feminist totalitarianism. This is a nefarious form of extremism. It would criminalise cheeky comments or wolf whistling.

We are told that erotic raillery is banned in the workplace. What a pity that we cannot have a giggle. Feminists are killjoys. No more badinage! What pleasures do we have left? You had better be punctilious is in adhering to the feminist gospel. One joke and it will have a career terminating effect.

Unwelcome sexual advances are harassment we are told.  Anyone who has ever made passes at someone has sometimes made an unwelcome one. How do we know of they are unwanted till we have made then? People try to pick up on clues. We send signals. Women talk obliquely. People misread signals. This is often due to wishful thinking. Men usually make the first physical move. People are sometimes unsure of their feelings. They do not know how they will react. Are we to ask permission for every action? Even if we do vocalise it these words may constitute harassment according to bigots. A boy has to muster up the courage to tell a woman of his feelings for her. She will admire him for having the guts to do so even if she declines his offer.

There are bad men who knowingly touch women against their will. This is disgraceful. A woman is surely entitled to give a lout a slap if he behaves in an ungentlemanly fashion.

Feminists are adamant that prostitution must be outlawed. These fools are exacerbating the very problem they claim to want to solve. Hookers form a sexual breakwater. Supposing a male is overpowered by lust. What is he to do? The solitary vice will not always suffice. The onanist will betake himself to a house of ill-fame. There he can satiate his natural appetites. A feminist will be outraged that a man has derived pleasure. That a woman has been paid for this will send the feminist into paroxysms of self-righteous fury. Put aside this moral spasm. No one has been harmed. Others may have been saved. They say an erection has no conscience. Isn’t it better for a man to copulate with a lady of the night than commit rape or paedophilia? Are they really on a par? Most men are not like this. But there are some males who lack self-command.

The feminist extremist – male and female – are taking away so much happiness. They are po face prudes. Many relationships come from people having the courage to take a risk – to make an advance. Sometimes these advances are ill judged and it is spurned. People must be allowed to try.

The epithet feminazi has often been used. It may appear to be a puerile pun. But is there genuine Nazism in the ranks of the third wave feminists? They have proclaimed implacable warfare on the unborn child. The grant no quarter to helpless babes. They would have done with men. Males are not needed as there are sperm banks and dildoes. The sperm banks have enough swimmers to produce a generation. The feminazi movement is totalitarian. It has gone a long way towards suborning schools, hospitals, universities, the media, the police, the armed forces, the courts, the politicians and in the United Kingdom even the royal family. There is not much left. The concatenation of feminazis successes has made them a force to be reckoned with. It will be devilishly difficult to roll back the changes that they have affected. Their cacoethes to control is terrifying.

Feminazis work themselves up into a tizzy of sanctimonious fury. They call consensual sex ‘violence’ because they do not like it. It exposes the central fallacy of their ideology. That is that most men are rapists and heterosexual relationships are generally abusive. Feminazis are worryingly convinced of their own rectitude. Their crusade brooks not the least dissent. They are hellbent on quashing any male self-assertiveness.

Another Big Lie at the heart of feminazism is the equation of misogyny with male heterosexuality. Most men are straight. Get over it! Yes, males usually find women physically desirable. This will come as news to you. Males generally prefer younger ones to older ones. This biological fact is regarded as scandalous be feminazis.

Feminazis have imposed their notion of sexual harassment on much of society. You have better observe this with scrupulosity. Otherwise it is dismissal, lawsuits and perhaps prison.

Feminazism certainly has ethical elasticity. It can sentence millions of babies to death without any compunction. In the next breath it considers kissing a woman’s hand the most abhorrent crime.

We have come to a pretty pass when a men’s dinner which has nubile waitresses in provocative clothing was the subject of questions in Parliament. Some British politicians attended this dinner. Feminists had an orgasm of ire over men deriving aesthetic pleasure from the female form. Some women who chose to work at the party disliked men looking at them. They also found some of the men’s remarks objectionable. Tough! Get another job. Swear at him. Do not call the police. Some called the police. Worse still the police interviewed the women. What was the crime hear? In fairness not charges were laid against anyone. What would the legal catch all have been? Political incorrectitude?

Feminists were in a tumult of distress at boys being boys. It is the height of preposterousness that Hooters has to tell waitresses that the men who go their will say cheeky things. Males are mostly aroused by ocular stimuli to a greater degree than females are. That would stun a feminist.

People sometimes overstep the mark and say crude things. What is the boundary of propriety? It is hard to say. Surely it is not a matter for the police. But if a customer says something vulgar there will be a flood of weeping.

There is an exaggerated manifestation of feeling around sexual harassment. If a male has said something lubricious to a female then she will probably overreact and be egged on by feminists.

There are straight male turncoats. These men take the side of the feminists. Some males are pussy whipped or will do anything for sex even if that is inimical to the interest of hetero males. These traitors are worthy only of the deepest disdain. But Judases are legion.

There are plenty of good straight women who oppose feminism or at least feminazism. Right thinking hetero women are not against their own sex. They are simply for a happy and collaborative relationship between the two sexes.

Nothing in this article should be taken to be against gay women or gay men. This article is not primarily about them.

If womankind is the fair sex what does that make us boys? The unfair sex?

Male overtures to women are often delivered with astonishing ineptitude. It is tricky to try to divine the signs that a woman is giving off. This is particularly so in a nightclub situation. The lights are crepuscular and alcohol has been liberally poured over the situation. Potation does little to hone emotional intelligence or tact.  The signs from a woman that betray her desire for a male are subtle and complex. In a nightclub when does a male know he has permission to touch her? She is not going to say it. Would that be being too easy? Plus the music is pumping at ear splitting volume. The low lights make pupils dilate. This is usually a sign of attraction. The male will likely misread the pupils. Supposing he touches her shoulder believing her to want this. Is that sexual assault? If she does not express disapprobation where can he touch next? Where after that? Is acquiescence consent? The criminal law a blunt instrument to deal with such vexatious matters. The situation is very confusing.

It is a sad day for romance and indeed lust. To indicate fond feelings for a female would cause perturbation amongst the feminist cohorts. How dare a male be hetero! But if a man is desirous of someone of the opposite sex what is a boy to do? He can try to read her signals. Observe her facial expression and judge the notes in her voice. Watch for wrist display or mouth play. Tilting the head back, engorgement of the lips, caressing the lip of cup and suchlike are said to be dead giveaways. This is not an exact science. No two women are the same. Not everyone expresses desire in the same fashion. None of the foregoing signs may be present. This is where one mans up and pops the question. Of course, as often as not the female does not have feeling for the male in question. He shall be turned down. It might be decorous or it might be indecorous. The male should endeavour to take the rejection with all the dignity he can muster.

Aphrodite is now adorned in thickest crepe of the deepest black. She wends her dolorous way to perdition. We are bereft of flirtation.

The War on Hugs has mainly been fought and lost already. The feminists dealt normality might strokes of war through indoctrination in schools, through legislation and through the misapplication of language. Their psychological operations were hugely successful. People start with the presuppositions that feminism is good, the patriarchy exists, rape is commonplace, flirtation is harassment and saucy photos are demeaning to women. That is half the battle. They have defined the parameters of the debate. When feminists control public discourse and their shibboleths are generally accepted we have an uphill struggle to convince people it ain’t necessarily so. How can we regain the centreground. It is hard to get into teaching or the media if you do not subscribe to feminist nostra. You might pay lipservice to them but inwardly dissent. As soon as you voice this dissent your career is over.

The counter-feminazi movement has yet to find an orotund voice. It is discordant. People rail against it from different angles. Some are religious, some are laddish, some are conservative and some are classical liberal. But few have the fortitude to join the movement. Even Bill Maher a liberal leftist has found the common decency to denounce the wilder reaches of feminazism. This was surpassingly brave of him.

It does not take much perspicacity to see that the situation is going to disimprove. I prognosticate that abortion laws will be loosened in more jurisdictions. Prostitution will be forbidden in more lands. More males will be imprisoned for rapes that never occurred.

Be ye men of valour! Breakest thou the chain! It would take indomitable courage to counterattack. Who shall lead the charge? I see no one riding to the rescue of straight males. Many damsels would like to be rescued to. They lament the dolorous declension of old style straight manhood. No more Valentines, no more roses, no more compliments, no more holding doors and no much sex. It is a dull old world these feminist bigots have forged for us. Were we foredoomed as soon as the abomination ‘Ms’ entered the language?

I want to fight back against feminist oppression. I want to stand up for freedom for males and females. But I do not know where to start. There are few allies in politics or the media. Is it a forlorn hope? The relinquishment of our liberty is probably too far gone. A free society may be as irrecoverable as Lyonesse. As we have probably already been vanquished would the struggle nought availeth? Perhaps I should just reluctantly accept the new dispensation. Is that stoicism or cowardice? Is emancipation too much to strive for?

We are led to believe that Western women live in darkness and woe. They are the richest, freest, safest, happiest and most infertile women on the planet. Feminists regard all those things are splenderous. Surely a Western female is in admirable plight. Her sisters in Saudi Arabia might not be in such an enviable predicament.

Are we now depriving ourselves of untold happiness.

Let the last entrenchment of liberty be our grave!

DO

Climate change is caused by two different factors. These are anthropogenic and natural. Anthropogenic means caused by human activity. Climate change is also natural since climate changes anyway and has done so for millions of years. Humans have only been around for 3.5 million years. Humans have only had a population of over a billion since 1800. It was the Industrial Revolution in the 19th century that started people burning huge quantities of oil, gas and coal. The internal combustion engine invented in the 1880s is used to vehicles and this hugely increased the amount of fossil fuels burnt by people.

There have been ice ages before. There was once a land bridge from the UK to France 10 000s of years ago. There was a land bridge from Siberia to Alaska and Asians walked into the American Continent. But then the Ice Age ended and the land bridge melted. There have been periods when the weather was considerably warmer than it is today.

There is no doubt among scientists that both human activity and nature cause climate change. However, climate change has been happening more rapidly than ever before in the last 100 years. Therefore, it is human activity that is chiefly the explanation for the current climate change.

In conclusion, we need to radically reduce our usage of fossil fuels in order to stop climate change having cataclysmic consequences.

DO

Climate change is caused by two different factors. These are anthropogenic and natural. Anthropogenic means caused by human activity. Climate change is also natural since climate changes anyway and has done so for millions of years. Humans have only been around for 3.5 million years. Humans have only had a population of over a billion since 1800. It was the Industrial Revolution in the 19th century that started people burning huge quantities of oil, gas and coal. The internal combustion engine invented in the 1880s is used to vehicles and this hugely increased the amount of fossil fuels burnt by people.

There have been ice ages before. There was once a land bridge from the UK to France 10 000s of years ago. There was a land bridge from Siberia to Alaska and Asians walked into the American Continent. But then the Ice Age ended and the land bridge melted. There have been periods when the weather was considerably warmer than it is today.

There is no doubt among scientists that both human activity and nature cause climate change. However, climate change has been happening more rapidly than ever before in the last 100 years. Therefore, it is human activity that is chiefly the explanation for the current climate change.

In conclusion, we need to radically reduce our usage of fossil fuels in order to stop climate change having cataclysmic consequences.

DO NOT SMOKE

Deciding whether or not to smoke is perhaps the most important decision you will ever make. Smokers die on average 14 years younger than non-smokers. In addition, smokers tend to be in poor health for the last 20 years or so of their lives. Smoking hugely increases your risk of pulmonary (lung) cancer and all other cancers. You will have a sore throat. It stains the skin, the teeth and the fingertips. People end up with a croaky voice.

Why would anyone smoke when it is so harmful? Some foolish people smoke precisely because it has deleterious consequences for their health. They think it is macho. Smoking is not courageous it is stupid. Anyone can smoke. It does not take bravery to do it.

Smoking is also very expensive due to tax on tobacco. Smokers are spending 10 pounds a day on a packet of cigarettes. Multiply that by every day of your life and imagine what else you could purchase for that sum of money. Smokers also have to go to cold smoking areas outside buildings. They waste their time going there and they fall ill out in the cold.

There is no pleasure in smoking. People get addicted to nicotine in cigarettes. When they do not get nicotine for a few hours they feel tetchy. They get angry and hungry. The only way to solve that in the short term is to smoke and get another nicotine hit.

Smoking is disgusting and immoral. It is slow motion suicide and should be outlawed.

Needham

I had heard the rumour he was born in Czechia. Turns out to be true.

I remember spring of F I was up to him. He was a cantankerous and scathing sort . A bald man with a brusque manner. He was certainly in command. He was an old chap and was visibly irritated to have to teach slow coaches.

He would praise some ”he is a man among boys. A ray of light in a morass of idiocy.”

Commended for good efforts were given to me. He gave one to Prescot. Prescot then irked the beak. Needham demanded it back. Prescot’s mouth fell agape in horror. He misquoted the Bible: ‘Mr. Needham has given, Mr. Needham has taken away – blessed be the name of Mr. Needham.”

Needham read us Latin poesy. He would then tell us the cadences saying ‘tum titty tum titty tum tum” and so on.

I got a Christmas present before I met Needham. It was grass in a bag which had a face on it. I called it Mr. Needham .

It was he who taught me how to spell emperor by correcting my misspelling. Further, I wrote that a patron gave a client money or a sportula. He reminded me that a sportula is money

Paddy K cheated liberally in tests. We knew he was looking things up in the book in tests. But no one ratted him out.

Mr. N expressed a desire to slap an irritating boy. Someone pointed out a copper had been fined for a clip around the ear. Needham said it would be worth it

Needham would do a monkey impression for Prescot – ooga ooga ooga Prescot. As in the boy was dim.

In Greek he ridiculed Harbord for his handwriting.

Such persiflage would be considered quite intolerable today.

Twas Mr. N who told us about the IRA ceasefire. Someone referenced the Ulster Conflict. Needham said one would not find fighting in Ulster now.

I remember the next year I bumped into Mr. N. and Miss A. Mr. N was with his goodwife. We walked along the street. He spoke about me and observed that I was not too keen a grammarian I was frightfully eager when it came to classical history.

In school hall Mr. N had a chap from sixth form select up there. He introduced Hood as buttons. Hood has silver buttons on his waistcoat. I did not get the allusion to panto.

I mourn Mr. N. He was one of a kind.

=============

Juan Rey

I knew him not till I took Castilian. In D I turned up to his classroom. Wrong place. He looked me up in the calendar and pointed me in the right direction

He was small and square faced. He spoke in a tenor voice.

In divs he alluded to his views. He castigated Franco as a fascist dictator.

He told us junete – horseman. I recall avoidance of the passive

I did oral with his spouse. I was stuck for words. I was trying to tell a tale about a picture and mentioned la guardia civil.

I introuced muself by my Christian name in Castilian. Uniquely he called me that

I sat beside an earl. tried to look at his paper in tests. Rey reprimanded me for it

I remmeber my waistcoat was tirn. had to wear a horrid green suit fir a week. Rey then criticised this for going on too long

Jewel Clarke got himself into trouble. Irked Rey whose face turned red

when we played up he told us we were like a bottom F div

Rey spoke to Balls. I had to drop French – I could not cope with two languages.

In a report Rey said my grammar may prevent me getting an A. It did not.

In class he asked it it was my piece in the newspaper.

I met Rey at a footer match the next year on Master’s. we spoke about the article on the death penalty that I perused.

He was a decent sort but I did not regard him with great affection.

============

GRENFELL

The only Grenfell I ever heard of besides the tower.

I knew who he was. He was slender and flinty faced. I only once came across with him. Invigilating Latin exam. I decided I might take some paper out with me. He called me and someone to the front desk as we were leaving. He looked at us gravely, and said in a declaratory voice, ”Well the board will have to be informed.”

Later Sagar called me to his study and said ”that was dishonest of you”. But why would anyone care about lined paper?

I had no other dealings with him. He was unobjectionable. But I scarcely heard of him.

Some years later 2006 I met him on the district line. I introduced myself and he invited me to sit beside him. He told me of his time in Uganda. He had been an engineer. We chatted pleasantly but he was not a sanguine type. He was too coldly mathematical for me. He told me of his son who was at Cambridge. We parted courteously. That was the last I ever heard of him.

Grenfell was a decent chap but shall soon be forgotten.

==============

WELSH

A hideous had grown up in South Africa. He and Hudson had been at the same school. But Welsh spoke RP.

I had no truck with him till B. outside Allington one boy thumped another’s shoulder without malice. what was that about – Welsh inquired

Nothing the perpetrator explained.

It was not about nothing – was Welsh’s judgment

I do not recall the upshot.

He was intense and choleric.

Taught me for Chaucer. A comp that November was a day in the life of the school. I took a snap of him when class was about to begin. He then launched into a moralistic tirade about what I had done. I had to give him the snap and the negative.

I sent it to him. Then in class he thanked me for it. I saw him outside his flat on the high street and smiled contumeliously.

He was supercilious and dislikable.

A few days ago I found out that Rev Tim Mullins died in July. It was a poignant moment to see it on the Stowe website. ”He’s dead!” I ejaculated when I saw the notice of his demise.

How will I remember Tim? Kind is the first word that springs to mind. I never saw his patience fray. I remember his lanky and slightly stooped 6’4” frame, his snaggle tooth, his baldness and his ever present spectacles. I recall his reedy and slightly croaky but always gentle voice. Decades later I can remember some of his exact words.

Mr. Mullins was diagnosed with a brain tumor in late 2021. He had treatment for it and it caused a thin man’s face to swell horribly. Mr. Mullins faced his death with his characteristic courage, good humour, acceptance and zealous Christian faith. He was eager to meet Jesus in whom he so passionately believed. His stoicism was uncanny. He was a credit to be priesthood. He was a Christian in the finest sense and was very popular even with those who totally disbelieved in religion.

Tim was born in the United Kingdom in 1959. His father was a doctor who had been born in South Africa. Tim’s paternal ancestors were presumably Irish.

The Mullins family belonged to the Church of England. Tim was the youngest of four. One of his elder brothers was Down syndrome. There was a vaccination that was offered to the family for the Down syndrome boy. The doctor suggested that they might not want to have it for the child because perhaps they did not want their child to live. But the parents said that their child must be vaccinated.

Tim attended Sherborne School. He was academic and good at sports: particularly hockey. He applied to Oxford without success. He went to Durham and read theology. At the freshers’ fair people were having the most terrible row about abortion. Should it be permitted or not?

Undergraduates were not allowed up the tower of the cathedral at exam time lest they fling themselves off.

Upon graduation Tim became a social worker. He worked in north-east England which he said was not a book culture. He met many single mothers who had been abandoned by their boyfriends whilst pregnant.

Later Tim lived in a centre for young offenders in London. He was infinitely patient and forgiving. He also visited people in prison. He recalled meeting an Old Etonian who was in prison who put on a cockney accent because he did not wish to seem like a judge.

Tim went for ordination. He read for it at Oxford. He was ordained in the late 1980s. He was fairly conservative theologically. Tim was against homosexuality and said ”Adam and Eve not Adam and Steve.” He said there were sound reasons to oppose women priests but he accepted them when they came.

Tim met a nurse about his age. They wed. He was against pre marital sex. They went on honeymoon to South Africa. Many people gave them grief for this saying it propped up apartheid. He remarked that had they gone to an oppressive country like the USSR no one would have batted and eyelid.

The couple was blessed with a daughter and a brace of sons. He must have been a magnificent father.

Tim became the Lower Chaplain of Eton in 1995. He took over after an ebullient and unconventional American named Chip Bristol. Tim was more conformist but was not dull. He was courteous, sensitive and liked by all.

The first class Tim ever taught was at Eton. A boy asked him if he had taught before. He bit his lower lip and gurned ”no” uncertainly.

Tim spoke about the ethics of war. He was also realistic saying that if people signed up for the army they had to fight wars they did not agree with. In class he affirmed the church’s rule against fornication.

The manner in which Tim taught was fairly innovative. He had us write and perform skits.

Mr. Mullins told us he had seen grown men quake in terror from summoning up the devil and he had performed exorcisms.

We drove to Walsingham. We chatted on the way. There was a song from the Bible – a time to die and all that.

Tim spoke of dinky couples – double income no kids yet.

Tim used to run Bible studies classes at his house once a week. Boys were free to drop in for tea and read the Bible and discuss it. He spoke about fidelity to one’s wife. He hinted at sexual matters and said that a couple should only do something if both of them wanted to.

Tim invited his GCSE class to his house for a barbecue at the end of the year. One chap forgot and he phoned the house for him ”Tim Mullins here” he introduced himself.

In A level Tim taught about deontology, teleology and Bentham. He taught about contention ethical issues. He was aware that abortion was a very delicate issue for some and sought to soothe them. Mr. Mullins lectured and the pupils took notes.

There was some confusion after Wilcockson’s lesson should someone go to Mullins or not? A youth did not. This semi deliberate skipping led to Mullins pretend shooting the miscreant.

One unkind boy said TDM was tedium.

when one young rogue was almost booted out Tim received this boy back after suspension with kindness. He asked, ”has tigger lost his bounce?”

When it came to ministry Tim was superb. The social worker in him came out. He was very helpful to boys whose parents going through painful divorces.

After 10 highly successful year at Eton he went to Radley as chaplain.

Later Tim was at a church in Chelsea – the one near Thatcher’s house.

Tim was chaplain at Stowe. He was a rip roaring success. Even non Christians warmed to him. He was upbeat, compassionate, non judgmental and outgoing. Tim was approachable and warm.

No one had a bad word to say for him. he was never rude to others. Having inadvertently offended someone he would apologise.

He was there at the valedictory dinner for A level at Wilcockson’s house.

At my college he arranged for a chap to visit me and try to keep me going in the faith.

After years I emailed Tim. I met him in London. I had dropped into his church in Chelsea in 2014 or so. He took me for luncheon. Has a former pupil taken you to the Savoy Grill. No you are the first – he quipped.

On another occasion we went for tea near his house. We spoke to the German. If she came in the door I would propose marriage on the spot I said. The door opened. He said he had thought that would be her.

That was the last I heard of him. I wrote to him a little in 2015.

Tim was a lovely chap and I miss him. I was privileged to have known him. He brightened the lives of all he met. He led a moral life. I wish there were a heaven for him to go to. I wish we could meet again and I could tell him how much I appreciated everything about him. I should have sought his help more in times of trouble.

Goddess created the universe. Goddess is all powerful. She made the universe in 6 days. She rested on the 7th day because even all powerful deities get tired.

She created Eve. She saw that Eve was sad because she had no helpmate. Therefore Goddess caused Eve to fall into a deep sleep. Goddess was all knowing but somehow had not foreseen this flaw in her perfect plan. The Goddess removed a rib from Eve. From this spare rib Goddess made Adam.

Goddess created the Garden of Eden for Eve and her male friend. It was paradisical. But Goddess commanded them not to eat the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil. Knowledge is bad by the way. but Goddess knows everything but knowledge is not bad for her.

The evil beast tempted Adam to eat the forbidden fruit. Adam succumbed. Then Adam inveigled Eve into partaking of the said fruit. Eve then realised she was naked and became embarrassed.

Goddess knows everything but did not know what Adam and Eve had done. Goddess asked why Eve was trying to hide her nudity.

Then Eve confessed that she had broken the one rule. Eve had made a big mistake in trusting a man. Therefore women should never follow a man’s advice every again and men should have no power at all.

Then Goddess cast them out of Eden. She cursed the beast to crawl on its belly and eat dust. She made Eve suffer in pregnancy and childbirth. She made Adam work hard on the land.

Eve and Adam had three daughters. They probably had sons too but we are not going to mention them because boys do not count. How did the human race continue? Presumably through incest but we are not even going to mention that.

One of Eve’s daughter murdered the other. We must all be descended from the killer.

Goddess put women in charge because they are good and clever. Male sexuality is evil. Men exist to serve women.

Women did everything worthwhile. Goddess gave all messages to women and never to males. Males are unclean a lot of the time and have to take special baths,

Men must be faithful to their women. But women do not have to be faithful.

A woman built an ark to save the world. Then the ark came to dry land. One of the woman’s daughters happened to see her mum naked by accident because mum got drunk and took her clothes off. This was the daughter’s fault though. Then Goddess cursed the daughter for her innocent mistake. Then Goddess said this daughter would be a slave and her daughters forever afterwards. And the two sisters would be mistresses over the descendants. The bad daughter was the mother of all whites.

Goddess chose for her only begotten daughter to be born by being sired by a virgin man who did not have sex with the woman who gave birth to Goddess’ daughter.

Goddess ‘ daughter chose 12 disciples – all females. We do not know if she married or not.

The Lady’s Prayer

Our mother who is in heaven

Give us our daily bread etc….

Once upon a time there lived a little girl named Zaza. Zaza was a rambunctious six year old with blonde hair down to her shoulders and a gap toothed smile. She lived with her mom, dad and baby sister Cahalta. Zaza had a life of fun and friendship but the one thing she lacked was a pet. One day she pleaded, ”Please can we get a dog?”. She was a good child so mum and dad said, ”Yes!”

Zara’s favourite song was; ”How much is that doggy in the window?/ The one with the waggly tail./ How much is that doggy in the window? / I do hope that doggy’s for sale.”

Zaza would sing many lusty renditions of this and insist that her parents join in. They would sing so loud that the house shook.

Would you like to sing how much is that doggy in the window?

Many little girls like dogs that are pretty but pretty dogs tend to be haughty. Such dogs have fancy documents called pedigrees showing who their parents and grandparents are. This proves their ancestry all the way back to Queen Victoria. Some snooty little girls go for poodles that are crimped and shampooed till they smell like air stewardesses. These little girls are in a hurry to be stuck up grannies who lunch in restaurants daily and speak through their noses. Zaza was not like this. She was exploding with energy and adventure. She did not pretend to be a princess. She was the sort of girl who would go for day long rambles through the wild countryside with her boy cousins Birney and Denis – clambering over dry stone walls and squeezing past brambles and furze bushes to have a picnic in a cows’ field.

Not all dogs are lucky enough to have a loving home. In fact some are abandoned by their human families. Some live wild with their doggy parents but sadly some doggy dads and mums die while their puppies are yet young.

Most dogs are kind to humans. After all we all know a dog is man’s best friend. Just as there are a few nasty humans so too some dogs are mean. There can be vicious dogs who snarl and bite. That is why we do not let dogs roam around town. Dogs who are found wandering about town on their own are scooped up by the dog catcher. He will look for a collar. The collar will tell the dog catcher which family to return the pooch to. Those doggies with no home to go to are taken to the dogs’ home. The dogs are kept there for a week and fed. Adults have to pay money to the government called tax. Some of this tax money is used to pay for the dogs’ food in the dogs’ home. Grownups do not like paying tax so the government has to take as little of their grownups’ money as possible. This means that the dogs in the dogs’ home cannot be fed forever. After a week in the dogs’ home are sent to the great big dogs’ home in the sky.

Zaza’s parents thought that they should take a dog from the dogs’ home. These poor dogs have no human family and no doggy parents of their own.

Zaza and her parents arrived at the dogs’ home. They had left Zaza’s baby sister Cahalta with her grandparents. A slender cheery chap greeted them at the gate and ushered them in. The middle aged man’s name was Seamus and he had a head of dense black curls and a laugh that rolled like music. Seamus wore a blue uniform of a dog catcher. They could tell that Seamus really cared for the dogs and only took them off the streets to save them from being knocked down by cars.

Zaza’s dad told Seamus what they wanted. ”We would like nice dog with good character – one who will be good with my daughters.”

”Does the dog have to look like a model?”, asked Seamus chuckling amiably.

”Ah no,” breathed the dad pensively, ”the dog must just be well-behaved and playful.”

”Are you looking for a boy dog or a girl dog?”, inquired Seamus.

”We do not want a boy dog or a girl dog – just a nice one, either girl or boy.” said dad sincerely. ”It is just like having a baby.”

Seamus reacted with peals of laughter. ”Come with me”, he said, his eyes gleaming with hope. Zara held her mum’s hand. Zara was skipping with excitement as Seamus opened a door and led them down a corridor.

On either side of the corridor were several cages each holding a dozen or so dogs. They came in all shapes, sizes, colours and ages. The dogs behaved in all different ways. Some were sociable and some were loners. Some were angry and others were calm. A few scampered about and others lay down listlessly.

Zara ran up and down the corridor. She was overcome with exuberance. The dogs sensed her mood and they barked eagerly- their tails wagging frenetically.

Zara saw a small yappy yellow dog. ”I want that one, I want that one!”, she yelled avidly. Her parents were not so sure. Zara grabbed her dad’s hand and led him to look into the cage where this dog stood barking.

Dad looked at mum and mum looked at dad. They could read each others’ minds. They both shook their heads. This dog did not seem to have a good nature. It was barking aggressively but this dog was so small that the bark did not seem angry to Zaza who was too young to understand such a thing.

Seamus saw what the parents were thinking and counselled them, ”Um, maybe you should take a look at another dog.”

The parents nodded silently and exchanged a significant glance. Zaza began to lose interest in the yappy dog which was now growling. All three followed Seamus towards the far end of the corridor. They walked right to the end – there was a door with the words ”end of the line”. They could see Seamus’ beaming face fall when he set his eyes on ominous the words on the door. Then he looked to the left of the door. There was the last cage. In it was just one dog. This dog was a black and white border collie. The dog’s long coat shone with health and and he was bursting vitality. The dog barked a courteous and eager greeting to Zaza and her parents.

”This is the nicest dog you will ever meet”, said Seamus. ”I would love to have him for my own children. I have been working with dogs for 20 years and so I would know a good dog from a bad one. I would bring this fellow home but I already have five dogs and five children. I cannot afford any more. They do not pay us much in this job, you know. I do it for the love of the dogs, not for the money.”

The mum and dad nodded wisely. ”Yes, we can tell this one is best”, said mum.

”Well we said we would give Zaza the choice and she wanted the other one”, said dad. He was plainly unsure what to do. Should he let Zaza have her way even if she was making a big mistake?

”The thing is,” said Seamus shifting uncomfortably, ”this is this dog’s last day. If he is here tomorrow morning he is going through that door and never coming back.” A pained expression came over his thin face.

Mum’s face turned pale. Zaza somehow suddenly realised the seriousness of the situation. ”I want this one”, said Zara definitely – she pointed straight at the black and white border collie and she danced merrily.

”That’s done then. We’ll take this one please!”, the dad was as pleased as punch.

The adults had to sign some papers and pay some money to help the dogs’ home care for the dogs. They promised to take the dog to the vet for his injections and buy all the things the dog needed. ”Do you promise to take good care of the dog now Zaza?” asked Seamus. ”I do – I do promise!” she said loudly and nodded her head sagely.

”Now what’ll we call him?”, inquired mum.

”We’ll call him Happy!” squeaked Zara triumphantly. The name stuck.

The mum and dad agreed. They would take the border collie. Zaza had asked for the yappy little chihuahua but sometimes parents know best. They paid for the dog and took straight to the vet.

”Ok it’ll be Happy”, said mum.

”There was no dog born with a better name for him,” laughed Seamus, visibly relieved as well as ecstatic.

”By the way we have all been calling this dog ‘he’ – this is a boy isn’t it?” asked dad almost anxiously.

”Yes, he’s a boy all right”, answered Seamus chirpily.

Happy was a little nervous getting into the car. He had never been in one before. But because of his easy nature he did not bark much. Before long they were at granny’s house and Happy was sniffing at the baby Cahalta inquisitively. He barked to tell them that her nappy needed changing. The humanoids seemed to comprehend and did the needful. Happy had a couple of accidents on the carpet before he was house trained. But the family were very forgiving. Happy took the family and soon they were all deeply fond of him.

Happy had a bath every week. He did not like being soaked and shampooed overmuch but he submitted to it with good grace.

The family lived in a three bedroom house in the countryside. They were surrounded by fields of pasture. Black and white Frisian cows browsed on the abundant lush verdure of the well watered meads there all day long. Happy was allowed to roam free among the drumlins, dells and woods. But he never bothered the cattle. Soon he was friendly terms with all the other canines around the place.

Happy was a sweet natured and energetic dog. He also knew when to be quiet. He was patient and forgiving to the children. They played with him. Zaza sometimes forgot he was a dog and tried to hug him like a human. Cahalta was beginning to walk. She sensed she need not be afraid of Happy. Cahalta would feel Happy’s face. Once she put her finger in his eye. He just growled a little to her let know it hurt. He did not scare the baby but she learnt not to hurt him again.

Happy became more confident around the family. He was taken for daily walks and was always good to his human family. Zaza was clumsy occasionly accidentally hurt Happy. Happy was understanding and never snapped at her. The family and Happy grew to love each other ever more.

Soon mum and dad had big news. Mum was having another baby. Dad explained to the girls, ”There is a house inside your mummy.” Mum grew bigger and bigger. Cahalta called her ‘hippo’ because mum was so big at the end. Mum did not like that name overmuch.

After a few months a baby brother arrived name Liam. When Cahalta heard she had a baby brother she imagined him walking in fully grown and pushing her in on a swing. She was surprised when she went to the hospital to find mum there with a tiny baby. Liam was not much fun at first. All he did was wail and fill nappies. Some dogs are jealous of such babies but Happy was so kind hearted that he did not resent the baby or run away. Happy was not petted or played with so much because everyone was so busy with Mr Baby.

A year after that the family decided to move to a far distant land called Libya. They could not take Happy with them because Libya does not allow dogs from other countries to come in because some dogs have a disease called rabies. Dad tried telling the Libyans that Irish dogs do not have rabies but they would not trust him.

It was about a week till they were to move away. Zaza was upset at having to leave Happy behind. The parents told her they would give Happy to her cousins Birney and Denis. They would come back and visit Happy twice a year. Cahalta had grown up a lot and she too was a little down hearted that the world’s loveliest dog was to be left behind.

Happy was a brainy dog. He must have realised something was not quite right. A few days before the family were going to hand him over to Birney, Denis and their parents something happened. Happy was sitting happily in the garden when mum hung the washing out to dry. Then she went in to do more housework. She came back an hour later and Happy was gone.

”Happy, Happy where are you?”, shouted mum. She was getting a little distressed. Then she noticed by the garden gate a large hole had been dug under the gate. Happy had dug his way out. Mum was worried for Happy. How was she going to tell the children?

When Cahalta and Zaza got home from school they were very upset to hear about Happy going away. ”Um, well, he has probably gone to find his friends”, said mum, trying to make the situation seem not so bad. But Zaza soon realised that Happy had run away. She sat on the stairs and wailed a dirge to the tune of Silent Night;

Happy come home/ Happy come home/ Ha – a – a – a – py come home.

Bitter salt tears shivered off her angelic face. Cahalta would not speak but joined the lament with her own sounds. Tears scalded her chubby cheeks.

They continued their song:

Happy come home/ Happy come home/ Ha – a – a – a – py come home.

They sang this chorus several more times.

Soon even dad’s face was bedewed with tears.

If you sing the Happy come home song twice then he might come home. Sing!

In every free moment dad had he drove around the area looking for Happy. He went to the park where they used to take him for a walk but no sign of him. They were giving up hope.

Dad put up advertisements with Happy’s photo on it. ”Have you seen this dog? Large reward. Phone this number XXXXXXXXXXXX”

One evening on the way home from work dad saw a group of rough teenage boys walking by the road. The boys were wearing shellsuits and had skinheads and wore fake gold jewellery. The tattooed teenagers had a black and white dog with them. It was a border collie. Could it be? It was! They had Happy.

Dad’s car screeched to a halt and rolled his window down. The boys looked around when they heard the sharp noise. Happy looked around too. He barked gladly. The boys had Happy on a coarse rope around his neck instead of a lead. Happy strained at his rope and panted towards dad. ”Hello sir, what do ye want?”, said one of the boys suspiciously. The boy had bucked teeth that would enable him to eat corn on the cob through a tennis racket.

”Ah well lads the thing is that’s my dog you have”, said dad. ”He ran away from our house just north of the city a week ago.”

Happy recognised Dad instantly and was straining at the rope and trying to jump in the car window. He barked an ecstatic greeting.

”Ah no tis not sir. Tis our dog now. His name is Prince”, said the leading teenager darkly.

”Well when did you find him?”, Dad inquired. Happy was whining to go back to his master.

”About five days ago – down at the park just north of the city”, said the leader of the boys.

”That’s when he ran away from us”, said Dad.

”’Ah well his name is not Happy – tis Prince, like. Isn’t that right Prince?”, Happy barked a clear ”no’’ to that question.

”No, your name is Happy!” said Dad. When the dog heard the name ‘Happy’ he almost jumped in through the car window again. Happy barked keenly and panted with enthusiasm. He cried and implored the boys to let him go back to his family. But they held onto him, heedless of his plaintive pleading.

”We are travellers, like”, said the leader of the boys. ”We have a right to a dog the same as anybody else.”

”You do of course. I will tell you what. If I give you a thousand pounds could I have the dog and you can go and buy another?” said dad.

”Ok you can have him”, said the boy.

Dad got out of the car and opened his wallet. He handed over the a thousand pounds. The boys took the rope off Happy.

”Welcome back Happy!”, said Dad. Happy jumped up and gave dad a slobbery lick.

”His name’s Prince” said the boy angrily. ”All right, Prince”, replied dad with a roll of the eyes.

In a flash dad had put Happy into his car and waved the boys goodbye. Happy almost smothered dad with loving licks all over his face. Then dad called Happy by his real name all the way home. Happy sang with elation.

Happy bounded into the house and almost knocked Zaza over when he jumped into her arms. She cried for joy. Cahalta danced with delight, her cheeks aglow with glee. They all rejoiced long into the night. The family learnt their lesson and put a collar on Happy with his name and their phone number.

After some time it was decided that they were going to move to a faraway country called Libya. Dad would be paid a lot of money and they would have a house by the beach. It was hot and unsuitable for dogs. The family were going to have to leave Happy behind.

The day came when they had to give Happy to Birney, Denis and their parents. Zaza and her family all kissed Happy a tearful goodbye before they drove to the airport.

They came back to Ireland to visit Happy twice a year. Birney, Denis and their parents looked after Happy splendidly. He had a wonderful life on a farm. He rounded up cows and climbed hay bales. He had many play fights with other dogs and he had many doggy girlfriends. He became the father of a few puppies. He had a very full and fun life. After many, many magnificent years Happy was very, very old and very weary. It was finally time for Happy to go to the Great Big Dogs’ Home in the Sky. His spirit lives up there with all good dogs and he still has his shining black and white coat. Happy lies for eternity beneath a large rock in front of Birney and Denis’ house.

There never was a dog with a more suitable name than Happy.

Jonathan wore his tattered Welsh rugby shirt and scratched his brown stubble with one hand. The other paw was very consciously thrust into his pocket. Thin mousey brown hair covered his disproportionately large head. He tried to suck his big belly in but could not as he waddled gracelessly along along the street. He strove to thrust his chest out and swagger intimdatingly. Try as he might: he did not manage to be macho. His big bug eyes were watery and icy blue. He was below average height and his skin was unusually palid. He wore blue jeans that had seen better days and a cheap pair of market bought trainers.
The man was on leisure bent. He was on his way to a pub where beer would be his only companion. Jonathan muttered bitterly to himself in his baritone voice about all the slights and humiliations that had been inflicted on him.
Jonathan’s face was as round as the moon and totally lacking in sophistication – he had ruddy cheeks. At least his teeth were all straight but they could use brushing. He could not wait till he went fishing. Fishing on his own was his one hobby. At least then he did not have to interact with people who all seemed to treat him so unjustly.

CIRCUS
”The circus is in town!”, everyone shouted. The band struck up a fast and merry melody as we piled into our seats in a tizzy of anticipation. The red coated foxy whiskered ringmaster spoke with breathless panache, ”You are about to see the most death defying tricks – do not try this at home!”
Just then a high wire artist started to walk across the taut wire 10 metres above us. All eyes were fixed on him. But he was blindfold.
”Oh my God; there is no safety net!” cried mum.
”I can’t look!”, said Isabel with sweaty palms.
”We paid good money for this – you have to look”, said dad annoyedly.
”Don’t do it; you can fall and die!”, I shouted.
But the high wire artist took no notice. Once he wobbled and a hundred voices screeched in terror. But he recovered his balance. We breathed a sigh of relief.
After a minute of baby steps he got to the other side. The band played a triumphal tune. We spontaneously broke into raucous applause.
Then the high wire artist announced, ”Now I am going to walk across the wire backwards!”

=============
A BAD MAN

The man had almond shaped, black eyes, glinting maliciously like stars in the night sky. He had cropped hair, dyed ginger like a fox’s thick coat. His cracked lips contorted to reveal a mouth, full of loathing. His nose was hooked like a peg and he had coppery coloured skin. His tall stature radiated hatred and no warmth. He wore a musty grey cardigan, lined with black checks, a pair of torn, tattered denim jeans and dusty, unpolished black shoes. And by his side hung a sword, made of a material as black as a nightmare. The sword was dripping with a dark red substance. And it kept dripping.

We all went to the park one splendiferously sublime sunny Sunday. It was idyllic T shirt weather with not a cloud speck sailed the cerulean sky. It was a rare day when Mother Nature proclaimed her fullest glory. My dad always jokes that, ‘In England summer is the best week of the year.’ The plants were all the perfect shade of a rich but bright viridescence. All of nature was wild and free. I gazed all around me in wonderment. It was a visual feast.
We took a blanket to put on the soft, balmy grass and had a Lucullan picnic. We had all our favourite food but it was not hot because you cannot cook in a park. We had delectable strawberry jam sandwiches and every fresh fruit you can imagine. We took some time to digest this sumptupous feast on the greensward. Then we played an energetic game of cricket. The sun smiled on our sport. But big bottles of coke had to be the stumps! My brother Victor scored loads of runs. Every time my dad bowled he would shout ‘Howzat?’ with exhilaration. But there was no umpire. But when we got dad out we were exultant but he stroked his beard reflectively. We did not keep count of which side won because we did not care. We all had a whale of a time playing. At the end we held out caps aloft and gave each other three resounding cheers.
The horse chestnut trees boasted full canopies of verdant leaves complete with pink or yellow candles. A gust of wind made them shake their handsome leaves cheerily.
There were lots of people in the paradisical park. We got some other kids to join in. It is fantastic the way that you can make instant friends in the park. We also went to the playground. The playground was alive with joyful shouts. The odd thing is you ask another kid, ‘how old are you?’ and not, ‘what is your name?’ when you meet. The grownups were lying around sunbathing docilely.
Athletic youths strivings strained the sports field hundreds of meters from where I stood. Comely girls urged them on with strong cries. A brawny limb booted a ball skyward and a second later I heard the loud report of the dull thud. The greasy leather orb flew through the blazing light like a heavy bird.
There was a shady little greenwood grove there that was ringing with dulcet and jocund birdsong. There was a kaleidoscope of resplendent flowers that were all in brightest bloom with bees busily buzzing about and the air was heavy with the sharpest scents of summertime. It was an olfactory banquet. Beyond the bee loud glade, I espied an array wildflowers. It thrilled my heart to see a zephyr make the fragrant flowers do a sprightly dance. Harlequin butterflies fluttered carelessly from one plant to the next. Not being a lepidopterist, I could not tell which species they were. Lint floated blissfully down like cotton from the trees. Everyone was cheerful and even the dogs barked musically.
There was a little lake with snow white white swans blithely and effortlessly swimming the deep, dark water. Mother swan was followed by half a dozen downy, tawny cygents. Myriad reflections gamboled on the water’s silvery skin. We hired a pedal boat and had a tranquil cruise around the pleasant lake. I felt a deep calm as as we plied the waters. At the corner of the lake the water flowed over a slimy moss grown rocks into a burbling brook.
We had heavenly ice-cream before going home after that marvellous day.

A day at the beach

We went by bus to the seaside. I was with my mum , my dad and my sister Munira. It was a nice and sunny summer’s day. We got off the bus at a sandy beach. I went swimming in the sea. The waves were not too big. I saw people sailing out at the horizon. I built a really enormous sandcastle. We had hotdogs at the beach.

My sister caught a crab and brought it home in a plastic box with water in it.
It was a fun but tiring day. I slept very well.

=======================

A sports match

We were playing cricket against Crawford School. We were quite confident because we practise a lot and we have a great coach. They went into bat first. They scored a lot of runs against us. I overheard one of our dads say it was ‘demoralising.’ They had some fantastic players but they were very risky in their playing. Eventually we got them all out. I managed to catch one of them out.

Then we went into bat. We scored ok but maybe we were too cautious. We were not scoring that many runs. It was my turn to go in. I was quite nervous at first. But after hitting a few balls I became more sure of myself. I started to take bigger risks. I made some big hits and scored quite a few runs. But finally I was run out.
In the end we did not quite catch up with the other team’s score. We lost but we still enjoyed it and felt proud.

==================

A holiday

My parents announced that we were going to Mexico. It is a hot country so we had to take summer clothes even though it was wintertime. I was enthusiastic and I read up about Mexico and looked at it on the map and found out what its flag looks like. There is no such langauge as Mexican. They speak Spanish.

The flight was very long but there was a fabulous in flight entertainment system so the flight passed quickly. I was exhausted when we got there because Mexico is in a different time zone.
The hotel was lovely and it was overlooking what seemed like the longest beach in the world. I learnt a few Spanish phrases and tried them out on the hotel staff even though they spoke English.
We went to the beach every day and did water activities. We went on sailing boats and lilos. There was a kids’ club and I made from friends from America.
I tried Mexican food but I did not like it very much. It is too dry and too spicy.
We listened to a band at the hotel each night. I quite like Mexican music which is called mariachi.
In the airport we bought souvenirs on the way home. I purchased a massive Mexican hat called a sombrero. It means ‘shade.’

==========================

A day at the beach

We went by bus to the seaside. I was with my mum , my dad and my sister Munira. It was a nice and sunny summer’s day. We got off the bus at a sandy beach. I went swimming in the sea. The waves were not too big. I saw people sailing out at the horizon. I built a really enormous sandcastle. We had hotdogs at the beach.

My sister caught a crab and brought it home in a plastic box with water in it.
It was a fun but tiring day. I slept very well.

===============

A sports match

We were playing cricket against Crawford School. We were quite confident because we practise a lot and we have a great coach. They went into bat first. They scored a lot of runs against us. I overheard one of our dads say it was ‘demoralising.’ They had some fantastic players but they were very risky in their playing. Eventually we got them all out. I managed to catch one of them out.

Then we went into bat. We scored ok but maybe we were too cautious. We were not scoring that many runs. It was my turn to go in. I was quite nervous at first. But after hitting a few balls I became more sure of myself. I started to take bigger risks. I made some big hits and scored quite a few runs. But finally I was run out.
In the end we did not quite catch up with the other team’s score. We lost but we still enjoyed it and felt proud.

========================

A holiday

My parents announced that we were going to Mexico. It is a hot country so we had to take summer clothes even though it was wintertime. I was enthusiastic and I read up about Mexico and looked at it on the map and found out what its flag looks like. There is no such langauge as Mexican. They speak Spanish.

The flight was very long but there was a fabulous in flight entertainment system so the flight passed quickly. I was exhausted when we got there because Mexico is in a different time zone.
The hotel was lovely and it was overlooking what seemed like the longest beach in the world. I learnt a few Spanish phrases and tried them out on the hotel staff even though they spoke English.
We went to the beach every day and did water activities. We went on sailing boats and lilos. There was a kids’ club and I made from friends from America.
I tried Mexican food but I did not like it very much. It is too dry and too spicy.
We listened to a band at the hotel each night. I quite like Mexican music which is called mariachi.
In the airport we bought souvenirs on the way home. I purchased a massive Mexican hat called a sombrero. It means ‘shade.’

What is the significance of Easter?

Easter is the holiest festival in Christianity. It is celebrated in April usually. Before it comes Lent which last for 40 days. In Lent Christians give up some tasty food. A Christian can choose to give up chocolate, or meat or alcohol or anything. Instead some Christians gives money to charity and do not give up any tasty food. In Lent Christians are remembered how Jesus Christ fasted in the wild for 40 days.

Pancake Tuesday comes right before Lent. The proper name for this is Shrove Tuesday as in people were shriven as in purged of their sins. On Pancake Tuesday people ate all the tasty and fatty foods in the house that they would not be allowed to eat for the next 40 days. But not that Sundays do not count as Lent. So if you give up sugar for Lent for example you are allowed to eat it on Sundays during Lent.

Some countries celebrate carnival before lent. It comes from the Latin words carne vale meaning ”goodbye meat”. People would enjoy all the good things they were not going to be allowed during Lent. In the old days you could not get married during Lent.

Palm Sunday is the Sunday before Easter. Christians carry branches to represent palm trees. It commemorates the entry of Jesus into Jerusalem and people laying down palm fronds in front of the donkey that Jesus rode.

After Palm Sunday is Holy Week. There are big parades in Spain in that week. It is used to be a very Catholic Christian country.

Western Churches (Catholic and Protestant) celebrated Easter a week before Eastern Orthodox Churches.

People go to church on Good Friday. It is a sad day and the church has all decoration removed. Good Friday is the only day of the year on which Christians are supposed to fast: adults are to eat only one small meal and there should be no meat. But a lot of Christians do not keep to this.

Good Friday is the day that Jesus was crucified. He died about 4 o clock in the afternoon. On Easter Saturday Jesus is dead. On Easter Sunday he rose from the dead about dawn. Jesus rose from the dead on the 3rd day. But he was dead for about 36 hours before he came back to life. Some people think he eas dead for 3 days: i.e. 72 hours.

Easter Monday is a day off school but there is no religious meaning to this.

Some say that when Jesus went to his mother the Virgin Mary she gave him an egg to eat. That is why people eat eggs at Easter. Then people started making chocolate eggs and called them Easter Eggs. People eat all the nice stuff that they did not eat during Lent.

In Orthodox Churches people greet each other with the phrase ‘Christ is risen’ and the reply is ‘he is truly risen.’ They carry on saying this instead of ‘hello’ until Pentecost. Orthodox Christians go to church late on Easter Saturday. When it comes to midnight it turns into Eastern Sunday and the priest joyfully announces ‘Christ is risen’.

The significance of Easter for Christians is that Jesus Christ was resurrected. That means he came back to life and has supernatural power. Christians believe that by dying on the Cross, Jesus paid for the sins of all people. Therefore, people who believe in Christianity can be forgiven for their sins and go to heaven.

Easter is a spring festival. It is about new life. Things are coming back. Lambs are born in April so people eat lamb and wild chickens start laying eggs again. Christianity grafted the festival onto a pagan spring festival.

The Easter Bunny is a later invention to make Easter more popular. Christians do not believe in the Easter Bunny. The idea of the Easter Bunny is a harmless make believe story to tell children to make like Easter. Painting Easter eggs and Easter egg hunts are just to make it fun.

Easter is more important than Christmas but less popular.

Easter is a movable feast. That means it does not take place on the same date each year. Its date is calculated by the lunisolar calendar. It roughly coincides with the Jewish Pesach (Passover) Festival. That is because Jesus was crucified just before Passover.

Mussolini. fasces. tech. literacy.

propaganda. church. police. military value. nationalism. philogenerative. conquest. corporatism. nationalism. race. machismo. warmaking is to the male…. civil liberties. individual. doppo lavoro.

everything inside the state.

communism. opposite though similar. cult of the personality. lenin. genius of geniuses. pharonic burial. leniania. hymn to lenin. institute of the brain.

marxism/. science. trisenko. grammar. agitprop. art bold avant garde experimental. refract all through a prism

i will believe that black is white if…..

anti religious. war on truth. history. bourgeois nationalists. future is certain but past is always changing.

big lie. katyn massacre. nazi soviet pact. assassinations. invasion of ukraine. downing of malaysia airlines.

At the zenith of British paramountcy in India, the Viceroy, Lord Curzon opined, ‘the British Raj is, under God, the greatest force for good the world has ever known.’ The Marquess Curzon of Kedleston’s dictum is a trifle bombastic. But this redaction concurs with the spirit of it.

There is much vociferation concerning the Britannic Raj these days. Curiously, Indian politicians hardly castigated it in the first few decades of independence. Only now that those in South Asia who were born under the Union Flag are dying off do we hear such shrill and intemperate invective against the British Raj. It is meet to do homage to the British Raj.

Some will find the very existence of this essay nauseating and objectionable. But however noisome views are they ought to be examined. Etiam diabolus audiatur. It is indicative of the fragility and insecurity of anti-imperialists that many of them think that imperialism discourse should not be permitted a hearing. We have come to a pretty pass when even in Britain it is now all but forbidden to espouse British imperialism. As the laudable maxim audi alteram partem is under threat even in the UK it behoves this essayist all the more to strive to give the lion’s roar.

Demagogues such as Shashi Tharoor inveigh against the British Raj. The Congress politico has striven to use just about every formal logical fallacy that there is. His hyperbole and incessant appeal to emotion renders his diatribe unworthy of serious consideration. The Grand Panjandrum of Trivandrum had the nerve to say, ‘’the British destroyed India.’’ In his mind construction and destruction swapped places. I would remind the Congressman of his national motto: truth alone triumphs.

Much Indian nationalist discourse is racist. They would prefer Indians to be enslaved by other Indians than liberated by Britons. Would slaves in India have been better off not to have been set free? How will nationalists riddle their way out of that?

The legacy of the British Raj makes me call to mind a Monty Python sketch in the Life of Brian. What did the British do for India? Apart from the abolition of slavery, the abolition of sattee, the abolition of torture, gender equality, religious equality, unity, the abolition of human sacrifice, cars, bicycles, roads, railways, ports, airports, the rule of law, telephones, telegraphs, the sewage system, running water, electricity, accurate maps, censuses, watches, clocks, the Gregorian Calendar, schools, universities, hospitals, modern medicine, museums, national parks, the English language, the army, the navy, the air force, the police force, the courts, modern weights and measures, the rule of law, the parliamentary system, the banking system, public limited companies, the stock market, cricket, hockey, yes but apart from all that. What did the British ever do for India? A compendium of the benignity of British rule can scarcely be composed since the good wrought by the British Raj is ineffable.

Dr Tharoor suggests that the defence that the British Raj’s bestowal of all this on India is a worthless argument. If all this infrastructure and all these institutions are valueless, why has India not stopped using them? Even the most inveterate Anglophobe must recognise that the Raj conferred many benefactions on India.

Nationalist tropes have been incessantly dinned into Indians for decades. Many people will be incurable when it comes to such nationalist thinking. By no means everything about Indian nationalism is bad. It is excessive hostility towards the Raj and bias that needs a corrective.

Nothing in this essay could construed to suggest that ethnic Britons are inherently ethical or superior. Britishers are a mixed bunch like every other nationality. But as it so happens the British were in a position to help India from 1600 to 1947 and also to help themselves. And they did.

They say you must not judge a man till you have walked a mile in his shoes. I have sought to put myself in the position of an India. How would I think about the British Raj were I an Indian? The emotional pull of nationalism is irresistible to many. To see the Indian Tricolour float on the winds, to hear the national anthem booming out, to see the gorgeously caparisoned Indian Army parading with pigris erect: it would make my heart nearly burst with pride. There is no mistaking the elation that Indians feel to see their flag borne aloft. The sentimental allure of patriotism is then misused to beguile people into hyper-nationalist thinking. No nationalism is bad per se. But Indian nationalist discourse that is unwarrantedly hostile to the Raj is misguided and unhistorical. There are aspects of Indian nationalists that are praiseworthy. Maintaining the oneness is India is a worthy goal. Centrpetal force ought to be supported. Likewise; British nationalism, Irish nationalism or any nationalism can be distasteful and wrongheaded when taken to the fair. Chauvinism is to be avoided.

Were I an Indian, I like to think I would be sagacious and courageous enough to reject nationalist mythology and the demonisation of the Raj. I would recognise that the Raj was created with free consent of India.

The haughtiness of some Britons would get my goat. It is difficult for those from mighty nations not to feel conceited. But the contumelious attitude of some Britishers in ye olde days towards Indians was nauseating.

The British failure to do more to alleviate famines was one of the Raj’s worst sins. Much more should have been done.

I take pains to avoid cognitive biases in myself. I expose myself to Indian nationalist discourse. I go out of my way to cite the wrongdoings and injustices wrought by the British Isles. I frequently ask myself, could I be wrong? Could it be that the British Raj was dreadful with few, if any, mitigations?

Nirad C Chaudhuri was one of few people valiant enough and wise enough to acknowledge that the British Raj had been desirable. For his fearless assertion of the truth in his magisterial tome Autobiography of an Unknown Indian he was hounded from his job at All India Radio. The grandeur and sonority of his magnum opus recommend themselves to any reader. It is an engrossing work even if its political slant is not your cup of cha. The incorrigible anglophile later found refuge in a more congenial habitat: Oxford.

THE RAJ WAS BY CONSENT

As Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi correctly observed, ‘The English have not taken India. We have given it to them.’ My only bugbear there is the misuse of the term English. As an Irishman I am immensely proud of the major part West Britain played in the glorious story of the Raj alongside our kith and kin from Cymru, Caledonia and Anglia.

M K Gandhi also noted, ‘the English rule here not because of their strength but because we keep them here.’ Gandhi was the doyen of the independence movement yet even he recognised that the British Raj endured due to Indian desire for it.

We are often told that the British Raj was something that the British did to India. It is presented as though Indians had no agency. All the accomplishments and the misdeeds of the Raj were with huge scale Indian participation.

When the East India Company (EIC) first had a ship dock in India it was for trade. EIC was purchasing items in India and selling British goods in India. It only carried on this commerce because it had commodities that Indians wished to purchase and others that they were willing to sell. In time the Mughal Emperor granted express permission for the EIC’s activities. The Mughals looked with disdain at England and Wales at the time. To be fair, India a much larger and mightier country than England and Wales or indeed than the whole British Isles.

India was an is a hoary civilisation. Its accomplishments in mathematics, astronomy, architecture, jurisprudence, philology, philosophy, science, medicine and other fields are most estimable. But having 20% of the world’s population one would assume, all things being equal, that they would be responsible for around 20% of the attainments in any field.

The vagaries of history meant that many dynasties ruled India or portions thereof. Not many lasted more than a couple of centuries. The vicissitudes of politics and economics meant that India’s borders were forever changing. Can India really be said to have continued at all? If you change a hammerhead twice and its handle twice, do you have the same hammer that you started with? The continuance of India as a polity is not as unproblematic as nationalists pretend. The lineage of most nations states is fraught with discontinuities and irregularities. But India’s case is egregiously complex.

The EIC was founded to make a profit. They made no bones about it. It certainly turned a handsome profit.

In time the EIC rented and eventually purchased land as trading posts. These were known as factories. Yet again, the EIC’s acquirement of real estate was by the free agreement of Indian rulers and Indian private citizens.

Commerce must have been mutually beneficial otherwise the EIC would not have prospered through it. If England and Wales were so backward in comparison to India it is curious that Indians choose to purchase its manufactures. The EIC was not selling foodstuffs and the like.

By the late 17^th century, the EIC’s focus has shifted from India’s Arabian Sea Coast to the Bay of Bengal. Though Mumbai was acquired as a wedding present from Catherine of Braganza in 1664, the EIC had Calcutta (Kolkata) as its base from 1690.

There was no grand plan to acquire India. As the Regius Professor of History at Cambridge (John R Seeley) said of the British Empire, ‘’it was acquired in a fit of absence of mind.’’ Until the 19^th century it took two years for a message from London to be received in India and then replied to. The British Government had almost no control over the EIC. Even in the 1870s Disraeli lamented the prancing proconsuls in various colonies who were a law unto themselves despite the existence of the telegraph.

In the 18^th century the Mughal Empire went into long term decline. The declension of the empire is usually dated from the death of Aurangzeb in 1707. It was perhaps portentous that the last great Mughal expired the year of the Act of Union. From that date onwards North Britons were also admitted to EIC.

The empire was divided into many provinces. As the empire weakened the provinces acted severally. Each province was ruled by a nawab (governor) appointed by the Badshah. The title nawab was supposed to be non-dynastic. But some nawabs treated them as heritable. When a nawab died his closest kinsman with leaderly qualities often assumed the nawabship. Delhi was usually powerless to stop him. The emperor tended to accept fait accompli.

As the empire grew feeble so there was a concomitant breakdown of law and order. It was slow and gradual at first. But with the fragmentation of the empire came the rise of insecurity. Banditry (dacoity) and piracy were on the rise. Because of this the EIC found it necessary to establish its own army and navy. Its army was overwhelmingly manned by local men. There were a few all white units. At this time, there was no colour bar. The reason for separates units was linguistic and to a lesser degree dietary.

The EIC’s army and navy provided security to Indians. It also provided others with employment.

Britishers were no slouches at piracy themselves. The Royal Navy was forever catching and hanging British pirates. In time of war however, they are granted letters of marque as privateers. They were permitted to predate the commerce of enemy states.

De minimis incipe the EIC became a major landholder. The EIC purchased arable land. It was then able to cultivate some of the crops that it had theretofore bought from Indian vendors. Moreover, it could feed its staff. The EIC also found that renting out land to farmers was a way to make a tidy profit.

The EIC brought modern technology to India. This included watches and navigating instruments. This was one of numberless benefactions from the British Isles to India.

The EIC was not a charity mission. No one pretended that it was. It was guided by self-interest and this was often enlightened self-interest.

We often hear that ‘loot’ is an Indian word. This is taken as proof positive that the EIC was a plunderer. But if so, who taught them that? Why has India not taken an English word for this activity into any of its languages? Britishers did not behave worse in India than at home. It is almost as though Indian nationalist historians would have us believe that no one in the British Isles had ever ransacked anyone else there. Perhaps they have not heard of the Nineteen Long Winters.

The culture of the soil was the mainstay of Indian life. Kinship counted for much. Little had changed in the life of the peasant in millennia.

In 1690 Job Charnock purchased some of the Hooghly riverbank. He was granted it ‘’in absolute sovereignty.’’ Once again, the EIC was there because Indians wanted it to be!

By the mid-18^th century, the Mughal Empire was extant in theory rather than in fact. The badshah’s suzerainty was more honoured in the breach than in the observance. More Indian princes sought alliances with the EIC.

The Mughal Emperor sold diwani to the EIC. Therefore, the Government of India granted the EIC to express and sole right to govern Bengal. Bengal in those times included Orissa, Bihar and what we now call Bangladesh.

The British presence in Bengal stimulated commerce. Siraj ud Daula was a Nawab of Bengal who seized Calcutta from the EIC. He acquired notoriety for his rapacity and sadism. Yet even this convinced anglophobe came to recognise that the EIC was boosting the economy. Amidst of a war against the EIC he opened negotiations to return Calcutta to them because it would be a fillip to the economy.

Most Britons in India in the 17^th and 18^th century certainly admired the country and its ancient civilisation. They had to learn indigenous languages since virtually no Indian spoke English until the 19^th century. Many Britons became adept at these vernacular tongues. They learnt the languages of the upper orders and not the yokels.

Indian was in some senses another Eden. Its warmth and fertility were remarkable. It was demi paradisical to people who hailed from windswept and rainy isles.

The British imagination was fired by India before the 17^th century was out. The first poet laureate John Dryden wrote Aurangzeb. This play was about the reigning Mughal emperor which is why it bore his name. Other British literary luminaries turned their hands to limning India’s glory and fame.

Britons bought objets d’art in India. These were conveyed to the UK whatever their provenance.

The EIC’s acquirement of India was sometimes by Machiavellian machinations. They were ably assisted by Indian allies. Kinship counted for much in India but treachery in a family was not unknown.

Many of those Britishers who voyaged to India in the 18^th century became affluent. They were then homines novi. The role these ‘nabobs’ played in British politics is revealing. Much of anti-EIC diatribe is down to snobbery against these parvenus. A roundtrip from the UK to India took two years. A man would not wish to return to his native shore empty handed. These men often made sure they were rich before their homecoming. But many found that India was their final resting place long before they could amass much capital.

Because of the EIC army and navy, people under EIC rule did not have to suffer the depredations of banditti and pirates. Trade could blossom.

Warren Hastings was the First Governor of Fort William (Calcutta). He is seen as the first viceroy. Hastings strove to improve the lot of the Bengalis. The exactions under Clive had been too heavy. Hastings was keen to ameliorate education and food supply. Hastings realised that there was little interchangeability between India and the UK. What worked well in the United Kingdom rarely sufficed in India.

Even if you think the EIC was morally bankrupt it was not idiotic. It did not want people to die. The EIC made money from taxing people not land. 9/10 Indians were engaged in the culture of the soil. Arable farming does not do itself. EIC also wanted customers for its commodities such as manufactured goods, tea and opium. It was very much in the EIC’s interests to keep people alive.

Extra-European expansion for the UK in the 18^th century was principally actuated by economic consideration. Instrumental rationality guided the EIC. Therefore, it was not in its interests to devastate India.

The impeachment of Hastings was a chance for those who loathed the EIC to calumniate it. Warren Hastings’ repute was not unassailable. He faced formidable rhetors as adversaries. Edmund Burke, Richard Brinsley Sheridan and a third Irishman all lifted their voices against him. Burke overreached himself with his operatics. Such absurdities redounded to Hastings’ advantage. Despite an exhaustive trial for eight years, Hastings was acquitted on all charges. Nonetheless, he suffered pecuniarily since the cost of hiring stupendous barristers was prohibitive.

Many Britishers went native. Some adopted Indian raiment, customs and so forth. Some converted to Mohammedanism. Precious few embraced Hinduism since Hindus do not take proselytes. Some Britons adopted polygyny if they had become Muslims. Concubinage was also accepted practice by upper class Indians of all faiths. It was a custom that some Britons were eager to emulate. There was no bigotry in bed.  By 1800 about a third of British males were married to Indians or in long term relationships with Indian women. We can deduce this from the wills they wrote. If others did not intermarry, that was because they had spouses in the United Kingdom. There was no social more against miscegenation.

India occupied the same place in the British imagination that Egypt had in the Roman imagination. The largest and most fruitful colony was as enshrouded in enigma as it was alluring. In both cases the colony boasted a civilisation far more ancient than that of the metropole and a polytheistic religion of spiralling and bewildering kaleidoscopic complexity. With opium and nautch girls, India proffered sensual temptations such as scarcely be conceived.

Britishers like Sir William Jones found India’s lore and jurisprudence to be awe striking and worthy of the most sedulous scholarship.  This hyperpolyglot was perhaps the most awe striking of British scholars to study India. The Asiatic Society was founded by the Old Harrovian under the patronage of Warren Hastings when he was viceroy. Its purpose was to promote study of all things Indian. He never claimed superordinate status for his race or his native civilisation.

The prodigious labours of Jones deserve recognition. He expanded the corpus of knowledge very substantially. He made Indology increasingly accessible. It was no longer within the confines of Asia that India’s cultural accomplishments were to be known. He awakened interest in India’s folklore all across the globe. There was a revival of interest in such matters in India too.

The Asiatic Society did much for the advancement of community intellectual life in Calcutta. Its influence spread through much of Bengal. The society was a manifestation of British adoration of India’s ancient and enchanting civilisation.  It is a gross refraction of the truth to say that Britons did not respect India.

Jones had spent much of his schooling having a bit of classics knocked into him. I too had to learnt Latin. Multa tulli! However, Jones was a prodigy.

Even North India was far from homogenous. However, the Mughal Court decreed that the official language was Persian. Persian words had ambled sturdily into Hindi. This eventually produced a composite called Urdu as in ‘army’ in Persian since it emerged into the Mughal Army.

When Sir William Jones arrived in Calcutta as a judge at the High Court he plunged immediately into India’s staggering library of literature and theology. He was fascinated by the fact that some Indian Hindus had little notion of calendric time. For them time was circular and no linear. The relative clumsiness of European language was apparent to Jones. The deficiencies of European syntax were thrown into embarrassingly sharp relief when the studied the morphology of certain Indic languages. He was surprised to discover some Indian languages had no preterit. The polylingual Jones was going to have his work cut out attempting the mastery if divers Indian tongues. He began to wonder at the linkage between certain Indian languages and European ones. Being all Indo-European there were more than obliquely related.

Sir William wrote a synopsis of Hindu and Sharia law. The sacrality of these texts meant that Hindu and Muslim scholars were reluctant to engage with them critically. For Jones, these texts were not sacred cows. He could analyse them objectively. Persian was the language of state in North India. Therefore, Sir William rapidly learnt it autodidactically. He also learnt Sanskrit. This British Mezzofanti accomplished mastery of several other Indian languages and a useful knowledge of a few more. His teeming brain was fixated by Hindu mythology. Some of his colleagues were similarly entranced by India’s vast and enrapturing. The legends of ancient India provided spellbinding evocations of a remote age.

Sanskrit had a supranational status. It is the ur language of much of Southeast Asia too. Indonesia was once a Hindu archipelago. Hinduism only survives on Bali. Hinduism never had a political coeval unlike Islam or Catholicism. Sanskrit was so elite that it did not imbue more than a handful of scholars with any consciousness of an international society.

Jones did not pursue the study of Indian Law merely because it caught his intellectual fancy or from sheer caprice. He considered it to be his bounden duty. He had to comprehend India’s legal traditions in order to do justice in India. His digest of the laws of India was very durable. It was used by juriconsults a century after his death.

Magna opera of Sir William are too numerous to name. Jones was a lexicographer and a grammarian of Indian languages. He understood them in granularity. He was a fantastic litterateur. Because of him print treasuries of these languages were created. His stunning attainments merit adulation.

A plaque dedicated to Sir William stands in the chapel of his old college: University College, Oxford. Some unkind souls have demanded that it be removed. The sourness they feel towards a man filled with admiration for India is dispiriting. Some malaperts and mean-spirited persons have accused him of sundry offences. The polemical nature of much comment on Jones is depressing. I tremble at the hideous spectacle of one who lived India so well being execrated by the descendants of the people he served.

The status of Hindu and Islamic law was loudly and self-consciously defended by its adherents. The EIC was only too happy to uphold this. These laws have still not reached obsolescence today when it comes to family matters. English common law is not considered an apt substitute for such affairs.

The Indian Civil Service (ICS) is one of the finest legacies of the British Raj to India. The ICS’s incorruptibility is attested to even by the Raj’s most implacable foes. The legatees of the Raj chose to kept this efficient organ intact. The unheard-of concept of disinterested public service was introduced with the ICS. It was unknown in previous epochs.

The ICS was not sinecure filled. It was because it was a profession that offered career progression that the middle strata of society became influential. Kinship counted for naught in the ICS. There was no nepotism. Meritocracy was introduced. This led to personalisation. A man could be judged on his merits. This was to have reverberations for all areas of life.

Much though independent India has wanted to be autarchic it often relies on British creations. A full flowering of India has only been possible when independent India jettisoned socialism and allowed free play to capitalism.

At that stage the EIC was using Persian as its language of administration. It was comprehended by the ruling class in North India. Urdu was then only semi-standardised. At the time Urdu was widely perceived as a bastard blend of Hindi and Persian and did not have the status of a respected language.

The intricacies of Indian courtly life were coming to be understood by Britons in India. Being so gigantic the customs and mores of Indian courts differed markedly across such a variegated subcontinent.

The British reverence for India’s splendiferous accomplishments is hardly indicative of white supremacism or racialist disdain for India. Viceroys were later to enrobe themselves in Indian attire and accoutre themselves with Indian paraphernalia. Governors-General rode elephants. They even consciously imitated the pomp and pageantry of the Mughal Empire once they had supplanted it and held durbars.

There was no colour bar. White babies were often suckled by Indian ayahs. There was social as well as sexual intercourse between whites and Indians. Admittedly this decreased markedly with the arrival of serious numbers of memsahibs in the 19^th century.

Until the late 18^th century EIC positions were open to Indians too. Some Indians joined the EIC and rose high in it. Then Lord Cornwallis introduced racially discriminatory laws. Indians and those of mixed stock were no longer permitted to have these posts. Indians were held by Lord Cornwallis to be unfit for higher posts. This vulgar deduction was an outgrowth of racialist assumptions. Rightly, many felt indignation about this wrongheaded and unjust policy. Nonetheless, Indians were welcome as guests as the viceregal palace. Even his lordship did not want Indians to be mere peons.

The EIC only existed because Indians wanted it to exist. This incontrovertible fact is deeply inconvenient for Indian nationalists. Yet it is indelibly stamped on the minds of many Indians that the British Raj was unpopular.

By the end of 18^th century the EIC was supporting the Mughal Empire again. Shah Alam II was able to live in opulence once more. Law and order were restored by the British.

Britons always knew that British dominion in India was temporary. Even in the 1780s Warren Hastings penned that eventually British rule would be, ‘’lost to remembrance.’’ Thomas Babington Macaulay wrote that British rule would come to an end when there was an Indian leadership ready to replace it. He was writing in the 1830s. You might disagree with Macaulay’s assertion that Indians were unfit for self-governance in the 1830s. Macaulay’s Minute on Education in 1836 has achieved notoriety for his unpalatably scathing dismissal of Indian learning. Macaulay’s ignorance and arrogance was distasteful and did him no credit. Nonetheless, his wish to provide better education in India was surely laudable. To some degree the change he envisioned of men of brown skin being English in mind and sympathy came to pass. He was lazily Eurocentric and assumed the truth of the evidenceless proposition that everything Occidental was innately superior. It was the sort of civilisational egotism that is common when an empire is mighty. This axiom has been assumed by other hyperpowers. The Chinese, the Indians, the Americans, the Soviets, the Romans, the Greeks and the Arabs have all in their times made this presupposition of their automatic moral, aesthetic and intellectual superiority.

Macaulay’s bland dismissal of Indian erudition is in sharp contrast to the homage paid by a previous generation of Britons to India’s tower scholarly achievements. Many Britons in the 18^th century were bewitched by Indian lore and learning. It was not just Sir William Jones who was engrossed by Hindu epics. Macaulay’s hauteur redounds greatly to his discredit. His pig ignorance of India’s lore and history when making such sweeping statements is galling. In antiquity India had been a far more respectable civilisation than anything in the British Isles.

One of the motives behind the Minute on Education was evangelisation. Macaulay was not so crass as to demand the indoctrination of Indians. But he claimed that any Hindu who was Western educated would not longer be a true believer. It transpired to be a false assumption.

Lord Macaulay said he wanted to create a set of people ‘Indian in blood and colour but English in taste and knowledge.’ To some degree he succeeded.

Only 2% of Indians are Christians. Very few of them were converted by the British. British missionaries were perhaps guilty of too much daintiness compared with the Portuguese. Juxtapose the situation in India to Latin America where the Spanish systematically a destroyed the religion of the indigenes.

Eric Hobsbawm said that nationalism goes hand in hand with schools and universities. As the Raj spread education it was perhaps undoing itself. Hobsbawm’s maxim appears apt in this case. Patently the Raj did not want Indians to be mere drudges. There was no rigid curriculum. There was not indoctrination. By contrast nowadays Indians are force fed a diet of anti-imperialist diatribe. The deglutition of such bile is anti-pedagogical.

Indians were schooled in modern medicine under British tutelage. Soon they had Britons among their clientele.

Some Britons were drawing racialist distinctions at that time. It was unfortunate that the zenith of the British Raj coincided with the growth of pseudoscientific racialism in the USA and Europe. Some of these nostra seeped through to Britishers.

The English language was introduced as the state language in the 1830s. It is half fortuitous that it did not arrive much sooner. Had it been introduced a century earlier it would have had decidedly less literary dignity. Perhaps it would never then have achieved the respect that it holds in India today. English was thereafter used in India by officialdom and between Indian elitists in private contexts for their own convenience.

Notably, English never experienced the esotercisation that Sanskrit did. Sanskrit underwent a transformation into something abstruse precisely because the priestly caste wanted to keep what was sacred a mystery to the masses so that they could be the intermedial class. The incomprehensibility of Sanskrit kept the lower castes in impotent ignorance.

The idiolects and ideographs of English gave it greater flexibility that several major Indian languages. The granularity of the language made it particularly versatile. English’s paucity of syllabaries is of course a defect. The anfractuosities of its perfective mood and aspects make it tricky. English is not orthographically exemplary. This has been a stumbling block to people learning it.

English spread in a rather haphazard manner at first. It took several decades before the Indian upper class embraced it. It remained a thing of petty proportions in India until after 1947. Even if it was wrong to introduce English there has been no effort to reinstate Persian!

Those who fought against the EIC are often presented as wanting independence. But these so-called independence fighters were allies of France. Had they won then India would have fallen under the French aegis. The shrinkage of French power in India meant a concomitant increase in British power. It was a zero-sum game.

The arbitrariness of French absolutism would not have been a better destiny for India. Had France won India then it is unlikely that the French Revolution would have taken place. The reforms that France has experienced since 1789 might have been assemblable by now by piecemeal reform.

The EIC fought numerous battles. Most its men were Indians. It always had Indian states as allies too. These wars such as the Mysore Wars were to some extent internal Indian conflicts. Had the EIC not existed then it is probable that these wars would have been fought anyway. The EIC was able to defeat its foes despite the EIC and its allies being outnumbered at almost every battle. The EIC and the British Army in India did not have military technology that was a generation ahead of their nemeses. The Sikhs – for instance – had the latest military hardware and French instructors.

Not every acquisition of land was voluntary. Some states were conquered by the EIC. But if the other state had aggressed the EIC then the EIC had an arguable case for the annexation of the aggressor state.

In the 19^th century more and more Indian states acceded to the Britannic Raj. There were 585 princely states. The great majority joined the Raj of their own free will. Cooch Behar is an example of a state which applied for admittance to the British Empire. The state was then embraced by the empire.

Membership of the British Raj conferred major advantages on a state. It was part of the strongest defensive alliance around. It would have access to modern technology and markets. The princely state would simply have to agree to conduct foreign relations via the British authorities. They say you do not miss what you never had. These states did not have embassies in China or the United States anyway. Thus, the concession that they made was of something hypothetical.

The Indian Mutiny of 1857 is known to most in India as the First War of National Liberation. Its causes were partly a religious prejudice against pork and beef. It was rumoured that new cartridges were greased with the fat from these beasts. The swine is profane to the Muslim and beeves and kine are totemic for the Hindu. There were other issues. The possibility of being sent overseas riled some sepoys. Soldiers had been told they could no longer wear caste marks on parade. This irked many. Soldiers were made to listen to Christian sermons translated into their vernaculars. The religious sensibilities of the soldiers were affronted. Some were perturbed by the doctrine of lapse. If an Indian prince died without a male heir of his body, then his realm was incorporated into the British Raj proper.

Indian nationalist historians have chosen to play up the political actuation of the mutineers. They suggest that the mutiny was mainly about a desire for independence. It would appear that, short term reasons and religious reasons more important and determinative.

The attribution of causality is problematic. We do not have many written sources from the mutineers. Those who survived the mutiny tended not to write about it. That would be to incriminate themselves.

The Indian Mutiny only affected some of North India. Some of the Bengal Army committed the worst military crime: mutiny. Other men in the Bengal Army stayed loyal. The Bombay Presidency Army and the Madras Presidency Army remained true to their oaths.

The mutiny was so cataclysmic for India that the Mughal Emperor, Shah Bahadur, entered a secret correspondence with the EIC. He wanted to change sides. He saw British victory as being better for India. He was right.

The Sikhs were pro-British. This was decisive in several battles.

The EIC therefore represented all the faiths on the Subcontinent: Buddhist, Sikh, Parsee, Christian, Hindu and Muslim. The mutineers only represented the last two. They engulfed India in internecine warfare. To some degree this was an Indian civil war. Had no Britons been there then some of this fighting would have taken place regardless. Religious sodality was nowhere to be seen among Hindus or Muslims as both religions had plenty of men on both sides.

Indian nationalists would like the Mutiny to have been popular and high minded. The annals suggest otherwise.

The mutineers committed many massacres of civilians. They were often slain in a gruesome manner. Moreover, they killed Indian Christians as well as any white. The mutiny is indistinguishable from a pogrom.

The mutiny was motivated by racism, obscurantism and religious bigotry. The EIC Army represented multiracialism and religious tolerance. It was gallantly battling for the values of the enlightenment.

1857 was not the prefiguring the secular democracy that India later became. The birth pangs of that were only possible once the Indian elite had acquired a greater exposure to Westminster style parliamentarianism. Significantly, the Founding Fathers of the Republic of India were all British educated. They were barristers to a man.

Had India become independent in 1857 the Mughal Empire would not have been able to hold much of it together. There would have been a fragmentary India. India is by no means homogenous! It took a lot of nation building by Britons for India to be a mere two nations in 1947 rather than hundreds. The Partition Massacres are illustrative of what had happened periodically between different castes throughout Indian history. This is not to suggest the Britons are incapable of ethnic or religious violence. They are as history proves. But in India Britons kept inter-ethnic asperities from spilling over into huge scale slaughter. Even then there were several significant outbreaks of inter-communal violence in the 1920s and 1930s. However, the casualty figures were limited by the British to hundreds and not hundreds of thousands such as occurred after British rule terminated in 1947.

The simultaneity of British rule and the industrial revolution in India is not coincidental. Had 1857 succeeded for nationalists, then India would have lagged behind other parts of the globe technologically. As a control group one can simply observe the adjacent nations not so blessed as to have come under the aegis of Britannia. They did not gain the numerous benefactions that India did.

After 1857 the EIC was wound up. It remained extant only for the purpose of trading tea and that incarnation of the EIC too was dissolved in 1874.

In the wake of the Mutiny, Queen Victoria assured her Indian subjects that all positions were open to them too. Yet the British Government did not assume the reproducibility of British institutions in India. They knew that India was not fertile soil for parliamentary government at that time. Parliamentarianism was considered arcane even in Europe in the 1850s.

India had often been attacked by Afghanistan and Iran. By the mid-19^th century India was safe from such depredations. There was some skirmishing along the Durand Line: the border with Afghanistan. The British and their faithful Indian allies launched punitive expeditions deep into Afghanistan. It was very valuable for India to have a stalwart and formidable ally in the shape of the United Kingdom.

By the late 19^th century about 67% of the land area of India was under direct British control. The British had district commissioners ruling areas of land. One such man could be in charge of hundreds of square miles. His entire staff was usually Indian. There was uncoerced cooperation. Indian loyalism is understudied.

There was a certain parallelism between the institutions of British India and the princely states. Functionaries were not horizontally barred. They could shift from one system to the other. Contrary to nationalist myth-making, Indians do not seem to have perceived themselves to have been contaminated by being ruled by whites.

The charge of divide et impera is often laid at the door of the British Raj. This is nonsensical. As this essay adumbrated, it was British rule that united a fragmented India. Britons would not profit by there being internecine warfare among Indians. Indians had fought Indians throughout recorded history. That only came to an end under the British Raj. Once the kindly and benevolent British hand was removed, inter communal warfare recommenced. Far from solving problems, independence was to create them as this recrudescence of massive scale violence demonstrates superabundantly.

Britons are sometimes depicted as stupid vicious and base in Indian nationalist discourse. Of course, sometimes that is true. It is held as axiomatic that imperialists are evil whereas anti-imperialists are not. This is ludicrous and childishly partisan just as the inverse presentation would be. Often the so-called anti-imperialists were just imperialists for a less benign or advanced empire in the shape of the Mughals, France or Japan.

Queen Victoria became Empress of India in 1877. She sent her firstborn the Prince of Wales to the Delhi Durbar. There his investiture on behalf of his mother took place in the quondam capital. There the princes did homage When it was Edward VII’s turn for the solemn durbar he did not go in person. He had his younger brother Arthur the Duke of Connaught deputise for him. Hence Connaught Place is in Delhi. The princes and chiefs swore fealty to the king-emperor.

The British Raj opened career opportunities for Indians. Their careers were not horizontally barred. Many went to work and dwell in South Africa, Trinidad and Malaysia to name just a few other British colonies. Indians were therefore colonisers of these land. This phenomenon is much understudied.

No one was ever conscripted into the EIC Army, the Indian Army or the Royal Indian Navy or the police. The princely states also had armies. These princely armies fought for the British Empire.

Armed white men were outnumbered by armed Indians by at least 10 to 1. Had these Indians mutinied or even a significant portion of them done so then it would have spelt finis for the British Raj.

India had been conquered by vast hordes when the Mughals and other dynasties came. This is to be juxtaposed with the largely peaceful acquisition of sovereignty by the British Raj. It relied profoundly on diplomacy and dealmaking.

White Britons were a tiny minority in India. They were always outnumbered by Indians by at least a thousand to one. The British community used to learn Indian languages. No many got their tongues around the polysyllables of Indic languages.

The British Raj was served by many others. Tax collectors, clerks, civil servants, railwaymen and the like all played a role. One Briton said that without so many Indians willingly serving the Raj it would not have lasted three months. An Indian retorted, not three weeks.

To liquidate the Raj, Indians did not need to rebel. All that was needed was non-co-operation. The Non-Cooperation Movement was a flop. If Indian civil servants, telephonists, railwaymen and the like had gone on strike then it would have led to paralysis for the Raj. The army, navy, air force and police force could simply have stopped obeying orders. They did not need to turn their guns on the Britons.

When the Raj took action against insurrectionists it was usually Indian police officers who arrested the miscreant. He was tried before an Indian judge and an Indian jury. He was incarcerated in a prison staffed exclusively by Indians. Often there was not a white face to be seen. The British Raj only functioned because Indians WANTED to serve it because it served India.

As Rudyard Kipling wrote, sent forth the best ye breed. The most expensively educated Britons often took ship for the Subcontinent. Men who had been schooled at Eton, Harrow, Westminster (like Warren Hastings) and Winchester went to administer India. Some of these men had attended Varsity. The apical status of the United Kingdom at this time should not be overlooked. It was a singular privilege to be able to study there in the world’s foremost scientific and technology nation. The USA had not yet supplanted the UK in these regards.

Indians in the UK proved that the idea that Indians were unassimilable was bogus. They could join British society. They were purported British subjects and had all the rights of a white Briton. That is why Dadabhai Naoroji was elected to Parliament in 1892. Not a single non white lived in his constituency. Why does no one mention Lord Liverpool becoming Prime Minister in 1812? He was partially Indian.

The finest educational institutions were open to Indians. From the 1870s Indians attended Eton, Harrow, Cambridge University and Oxford University. Unlike the USA, there was no colour bar. Indians educated in the British Isles enjoyed an exposure to parliamentarianism. Not many doubted the applicability of this practice to their homeland. It was then that the reification of Indian nationalism took place. The British Raj had inadvertently sowed the seeds of its own dissolution. This led ineluctably to the establishment of legislatures along the lines of the Westminster paradigm. The Mother of Parliament bore offspring. It was a fatality that the UK did not share with other metropoles. They did not found parliamentary institutions that turned against them. Pluralism was also a notion that the UK introduced. The shariat state that preceded the Raj was not a valid model on a par with that.

Nehru’s political baptism came in 1906 at the time of the Liberal landslide. Seeing Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman become PM convinced Nehru at a formative age that sweeping change was possible and soon.

Education in the United Kingdom left its mark. Many Britons remarked on Nehru’s gentilesse even when they arrested him. He had never been bumptious at school either.

By the late 19^th century there was almost no dissent though free speech was guaranteed. Indian opinion so far as we can determine was pro-Raj. The long exclusion of Indians from the heaven born of the upper echelons of the Indian Civil Service was a motor force behind Congress. Congress critiqued the Raj but fitfully at first. Its criticism then grew in certitude, fervour and acridness.

The Raj even created the Indian National Congress. No oppressor would ever do this. Congress’s brief was to provide critical analysis. For the first few decades Congress wanted British rule to continue. India had free expression which is why Congress was free to castigate the British authorities.

Congress had some white Britons in it at first. Allan Octavian Hume was one of them. The anglophone Indians were then the crest atop a vast plinth of Indians. Most people were unlettered even in their mother tongue. The Raj believed that the Congress elite could guide the ductile masses.

One of the few things that not even the most vicious Indian ultra-nationalist took exception to was, the English language.  Even some ultra-nationalists were bilingual adepts.

Britain forged Indian national consciousness even if it did so accidentally. Railways, roads, telegraphs, newspapers and the English language united India more so than any political movement.  As Benedict Anderson said, it was the dawn of print-capitalism that expedited the creation of a sense of nation-ness. For the first time Indians could meet people from the far end of the Subcontinent after only three days of travel. For the first time there was a language common to all provinces and faiths albeit it one spoken only by a minute educational elite. Of necessity, it was a language of bilinguals. Anglophone Indians also spoke their local vernaculars. The resurgence of Hindi in political circles in the last 30 years is an interesting phenomenon and to some extent a reaction against globalisation. Notwithstanding that, the English language’s usage has increased exponentially since the end of the Raj. Yet it has still not achieved universality in India. However, Hindi has not superseded it in most spheres of elite life. The fusion of the two languages is a long way off despite English accretions to Hindi. English is still the prestige language. Perhaps that it why Indian English so often sounds stately and snobbish.

It is a curious irony that the genesis of Indian nationalism as we know it was an unintended consequence of British imperialism. The technology, the language and the shared non-whiteness allowed Indians to define themselves. Prior to the 19^th century provincial particularism predominated even among the elite. But from the 1880s there was a collective motion among the anglophone educational aristocracy. It was a tiny segment of the population to begin with.  But it was only when this highly educated anglophone cadre was formed that India achieved quiddity as a political entity.

The fixity of the English language provided a reliable language for the Indian elite to communicate in. Because they learnt is consciously and not at their mother’s knee it was not so protean.

Despite professing democracy, Congress made little effort to induct the illiterate majority into democracy before 1947. They wanted self-rule not majority rule. There was little spurring for independence from farmers.

In the countryside where most Indians dwelt none, but substantial landowners spoke English until well into the 20^th century. Why was English so monopolised? Perhaps because knowledge is power. Some of the baronial classes even reprobated education for the lower orders. There are clear analogies to be drawn between this attitude and say the view of the aristocrats in 19^th century tsarist Russia.

Tellingly, Congress did not repudiate the feudal attitude of the landlords for some time after independence.

The dissemination of maps across India in the late 19^th century as railway timetables spread gave people a mental image of their country. India could therefore be conceived spatially and even temporally but even the illiterate majority.

As Benedict Anderson said it is print, map and museum that formulated modern nationalism. A census was also a key element in this. It categorised people. Prior to the late 19^th century Indianness was not part of the warp and weft of daily life.

Printed Korans and their translations into Indian vernaculars also spread in India in the late 19^th century. This led to a revival of Islamic fervour and puritanism. There had been much backsliding due to the dissipation of the Mughal Court. After 1857 that was all gone. The recrudescence of religious mania is one of the undesirable by-products of British rule. The theomorphising of print though is a fascinating phenomenon. This was no conscious manipulation of British policy.

As we have seen it is the convergence of the communications revolution, the transport revolution and the English language that created a pan-Indian leadership class capable of carrying the baton after 1947. The haute bourgeoise were the ruling class after independence and not the princes. It is hard to imagine that happening without Britannic suzerainty.

One of the fascinating consequences of British rule is that neither Hindus nor Muslims claimed to be the sole state bearing people by the 1940s. Half the Muslims claimed a separate homeland, but they had no wish to rule large numbers of infidels. They did not regard Hindus as assimilable.

An embryonic national leadership for India was formed not in India but in the Inns of Court in London. That is perhaps why India has always at least paid lip service to the rule of law. Curiously, the same cannot be said for Pakistan despite its Founding Fathers having the same background. Pakistan’s foundation is owed to barristers such as M A Jinnah and Chaudhry Rehmat Ali. But since then, the country has been ruled officially or unofficially by a Punjabi Pinochet most of the time.

The English language is one of the things that has prevented the fragmentation of India since 1947. The vernaculars that predated English give rise to an identity and that could well have led to more separatist movements. The politico-cultural eminence of English had the effect and creating a certain solidarity amongst the highly educated.

There has been an attempt to foster Hindi as a national language in recent decades. This has borne fruit. However, the elite appears to be irremediably anglophone.

In the 1950s there were proto-national impulses, to put it mildly, behind the campaign for the States Reorganisation Act. Had it not been for the elite being united by English it is probable that a more serious attempt at secession would have been made.

The trans-Indian intelligentsia’s exposure to British notions of parliamentarianism filled them with admiration. They wished to bring home this British export. It was an idea on which the Raj was distinctly cool. English remained a language of power. Congress was still obliged to address the masses in local languages long after independence. It finds it expedient to do so even today.

The Congress Party was soon to start a battle for men’s minds. They were not able to penetrate the countryside very much.

Capitalism was we know it entered India with the British Raj. Indians had always traded. But the British banking system linked India to world money markets. An Indian schroff did not have to rely on a system of codewords any longer. Joint stock companies revolutionised Indian commerce.

At the maximum extent of the Raj there were only 40 000 British soldiers in India. The population of India was then over 250 000 000. The British military presence was minute. That was because India was not occupied. Force was not needed to control India. There as the pro-British Indian Army which had 250 000 men. This taken together with the British Army in India still meant that India had very few soldiers in it. The princely states also had small armies. If the Indian Army or the princely states armies had mutinied, they would have defeated the British Raj extremely easily. India was far less militarised under the Raj than it is today. The British troops in India and their Indian comrades were mostly deployed on the North-West Frontier. They were defending India from the ancestors of the Taliban. As the frontier was replete with soldiery, the plains of India were all but devoid of soldiers. Huge swathes of the country were unguarded since people were content. There was no insurrectionary threat for decades. Nationalists wish to pretend that there were fervent rebels in India in the late 19^th century but that is bogus. The Pathans on the Frontier were fighting over local and even tribal issues. They were no friends of the Hindus of the plains or even the Muslims of the plains.

Because of the British Army and the British trained, equipped and officered Indian Army there were no more incursions by Afghanistan or Burma. People could go about their lawful business secure.

The security apparatus was of the British Raj was tiny. There was a miniscule Intelligence Bureau to keeps tabs on terrorists and troublemakers. Congress, the Muslim League and other organisations were honeycombed with informers. Perhaps we shall never know which famous Indian nationalists were actually double agents.

There was patently no siege mentality on the part of Britons in India. They were so vulnerable, but no one attacked a serious number of them. The unenforceability of British authority without huge scale India support was blindingly obvious.

The British Raj also saw the spread of humanism and rationalism. India had had no Enlightenment prior to that. Admittedly there had been Mughal Emperors who were ecumenical but that is different.

Some Britons in India in the last 20 years of the Raj knew precious little of the local lingo. Some spoke not Hindi but dog Hindi. This was commented on by numerous Indians. The Raj was past its heyday. Maybe that was why antipathy towards the Raj grew.

There has been Christians in India since Antiquity. The Assyrian Church was indifferent to the British Raj. This was a matter of some disappointment to the latter.

In the 1920s Congress decided to embarrass the British into granting autonomy. An evil power could not be embarrassed. Congress recognised British decency in believing that Britons could be embarrassed. Congress believe that armed force was not needed to bring about the granting of independence. Until 1930. Congress did not even want independence. It only wanted dominion status within the British Empire. But there were elements that were bolshier.

Congress became more militant as the Soviet Union became mightier. The simultaneity of the two events is not coincidental. Congress realised that the British Empire faced an existential threat. Congress had a potential ally in the shape of this totalitarian force. Congress did not seek to establish a totalitarian society. There were Indian communists who travelled to the USSR and embraced the Stalinist system with fervour and with relish. They returned to India preaching red revolution. These agitators became a menace to the Raj.

The Delhi Durbars proved that British rule was with the express consent of the governed. All Indian princes did homage to the Empress of India who was represented by her son the Prince of Wales. The same was true of the subsequent durbars.

In time there were legislative assemblies. These conferred legitimacy on the Raj. Elected public representatives approved of the Raj and swore fealty thereto. These bodies were elected only by affluent men. Only 20% of Indians could read at the time. Literacy and wealth were largely the same thing.

The Chamber of Princes in the 1920s and 1930s was another legislative body which demonstrated that the Raj was legitimate. The chamber was unelected. It was like the House of Lords. The hereditary principle was accepted in India. In India today family is still everything.

By the 1920s there was unrest. Some Indian wanted independence. A few had wanted it before the First World War. There were terrorist attacks in the 1920s. However, their number was miniscule. In a country as enormous as India the scale of terrorism was trifling. This proves that people were content.

There were protests and hartlals in the 1920s and 1930s. However, these were in a few major cities. Most people lived in the countryside. They were unaffected. There has been far too much focus on a few urban troublemakers. The generality of Indians was quiescent and accepted the Raj.

In the 1920s and 1930s the economy stagnated. That came as the population was starting to grow rapidly. Improved food supply and medicine had got mortality down. The combination of economic stagnation and a bulging population was unrest. Therefore, the discontent in the 20s and 30s was due to these factors more than the British Raj per se. An independent India would also have had to cope with public anger in such a situation.

Subhas Chandra Bose articulated a ferocious indictment of British rule. However, even Netaji found something to admire on the British dominion in India. He concurred that India was not ripe for democracy. One of this Cambridge graduate’s notable characteristics was to speak English. Not to do so would have been to give his movement and anachronistic gloss. He was sceptical of the political wisdom of the Indian masses. He felt the priestly caste was apt to inculcate superstitions into the unlettered peasantry. They could easily be led astray. Therefore, he called for the smack of firm government. Though he was no overfond of the Raj he noted the efficacy and incorruptibility of the Indian Civil Service.

By the 1940s it appeared that most Indians wanted independence. We cannot know since there were no surveys. There were elections but only about 20% of males could vote. We do not know if their views were representative of the populace as a whole.

In 1942 the British Government announced that independence would come within two years of the end of war.

In 1947 George VI, Emperor of India, announced that the UK was granting sovereign independence to India. His titulature changed to King of India.

His Majesty’s vassals in the Subcontinent were the 585 princely states. Some of these opted for Pakistan. Some of them had acquired their titles and states through hucksterings as the Mughal Empire had slowly fallen apart.

The British Empire suffered elephantiasis from 1918 onwards. Imperial overstretch enfeebled it.

Because India has no common language and in 1947 even the most widely spoken language – Hindi – was spoken by no more than 20% of the populace there was no philological-lexicographical movement to affect the masses. This is markedly dissimilar from what transpired in European nationalism. That is why in India the British manufactured state was crucial in establishing India as a single entity. The necessity of a unified language for the ruling class was provided by the British. That is why Congress was a genuinely all India movement. India has involved its own idiolect of English.

It was a paroxysm of religious mania cum nationalism that prevented India from remaining united in 1947. But India in its current borders is now an ineradicable force.

The Britons in India did not really become a creole community. The identification with their ancestral homeland even after several generations in India was what differentiated them from creole communities elsewhere. The Anglo-Indians – those of mixed blood – arguably did become one. This is perhaps derivable from the notion that only those of fully white stock were true Britons.

India has left an indelible print on the British Isles. Indian and British culture are to some degree interwoven. Indianisms are unselfconsciously uttered by Britons who have no ancestral link to South Asia. There are many Britons of South Asian ancestry who cannot locate themselves entirely in one culture or other but in a happy melange of the twain.

It is tristful to reflect that most Britons remain incorrigibly ignorant of South Asian affairs. However, the notion that the word India conjures up only images of snake charmers is bogus.

THE RAJ WAS GOOD FOR INDIA

In extolling the manifold virtues and accomplishments of the British Raj I can only pronounce it magnificent. Even some quibble with this summation I must reply in the words of Warren Hastings, ‘I stand astounded at my own moderation.’

India owes its unity to the Raj. This might seem counterintuitive. What about Partition? Partition came at the call of a segment of the Indian population. That is to say most of the 25% of population who inhabited what became Pak and Bangladesh. Congress agreed to Partition. The Parliament of India voted in favour. Partition was an Indian idea. London fiercely opposed it. Stafford Cripps, Lord Mountbatten and other tried might and main to forfend it.

Why is Indian one country and not hundreds? That is because of the Raj piecing it together. India has been united, divided, reunited and redivided several times in its very long history.

At times India excluded certain states that are not part of it. At times it included some of Afghanistan. India also holds land that once pertained to Nepal.

India owes its existence to its conquest of other states. No sovereign state has had a parthenogenesis. India is unexceptional in this respect. The prefatory lineage of India blurs into myth perhaps five millennia ago. But if conquest delegitimises the Raj, then it must befall that it delegitimises independent India to. What is sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander.  The pretended delegitimisation of either state on the ground of having annexed and incorporated other states is equally fatuous.

India claims its borders based on British era maps and treaties. Therefore, the Raj’s legacy cannot be all bad. The Republic of India explicitly argues it is a successor state of the Raj and must be allowed the advantages of British era treaties. Were it not for that, then China could claim even more land than it already does. India now includes some territory taken from Nepal by the EIC. If India wishes to disavow its British heritage as unmitigatedly wicked, then it ought to affect the retrocession of such territory to the Nepalis forthwith.

It was technology, trade, the military, the police, and the administration that knitted India together. The Mughal Empire did not govern the whole of modern India. Admittedly, it governed some zones that are no longer Indian.

Each region or state of India had its own peculiarities. India is now 28 states. Many of these would qualify as large countries if independent. Many are analogous to sovereign states in that they are based around distinct language and culture and have a tradition of independence.

Nationalism is about particularism. It is hard to see what Indians have in common beyond their British heritage. British influence was mostly about the public sphere. Indians usually did not adopt British clothing, cuisine or mannerisms. Cricket and tea are two of the unofficial aspects of British life that caught on in India. Admittedly, tea was an import from China.

Tea drinking caused a population explosion. So many people in the UK and India died in the 17^th century from drinking foul water. Boiling it made it safe to drink. There were health giving properties of tea too.

The British Raj also helped to forge Indian nationhood by introducing the fourth dimension: times. Of course, Indians had a concept of time afore that. India has several calendric systems. But the British introduction of timepieces and timetables made time a universal concept: something that could be measured with precision. To many Hindus, life was something omnitemporal because they believed in reincarnation.

India had little sense of horizontal nationality in the 19^th century. People could identify with their social superiors and inferiors who shared their language, culture and faith. India is the most heterogenous country in the world. It is a miracle that it is united at all. It is not all that dreadful that 20% of India’s land seceded in 1947. It is astonishing that as much as 80% of the Raj remained in one piece. Many bewail Partition, as do I. But it could easily have been far, far worse.

It is lugubrious and regrettable that caste prejudice has not disappeared yet in India. Caste discrimination by law still exists in India. But the upliftment of the downtrodden castes was not attempted until the British epoch. With the advent of the railways, castes could not be physically separated any longer. This was the very genesis of sociological solidity. It has grown only very slowly.

Some ill-fated Hindu reformers call for the abolishment of caste discrimination under British rule. They did not get far. The lesson that the Raj learnt from 1857 was to tread very carefully on religious matters. This was a sensitive issue and the British authorities thought is sagacious to allow the Hindu authorities to resolve this issue for themselves.

India has been able to resist the absolutizing tendences of certain political factions thus far. That is partly attributable to the Raj. Those who demagogically call for a confessional state or communism have been resisted.

As we have seen Indian society is by no means a replication of British society. The Indian State is not exactly and analogue of the UK State either. A fascinating question is not asked often enough. How did Britain learn from India? The British Raj was educative on both sides.

Britain gained shampoo, zero, pyjamas, polo, chess, the word bungalow and much more. Some of this came via intermediaries such as the Ishmaelites.

When India moved towards independence Churchill, Clement Attlee, Sir Stafford Cripps, Lord Wavell, Leo Amery and Lord Mountbatten all agreed that India should be one. That is why they tried their uttermost to talk the Muslim League out of the Pakistan demand. But sometimes the struggle nought availeth. At least Mountbatten was able to dissuade almost every princely state from seeking independence. That is why the UK bequeathed its legacy to only two states on the Subcontinent and not 587.  That is to say India, Pakistan and 585 princely states. Whatever the frailties of the British Raj it did favour Indian unity.

Some Indians have said that Partition was the final insult. But Partition was voted for by Congress. London emphatically did not want Partition.

It is much more mundane to accept the truth than to believe a conspiracy theory. What did the UK gain from Partition? Enmity?

It is true that some of the institutions created by Britons in India might have subsequently been created by Indians off their own bat. Furthermore, some of the infrastructure constructed under Britannic superintendence might have been developed by Indians even if no Briton had ever set foot on India’s shore. However, it is unlikely that much of this would have been accomplished by 1947. Look at the trajectory India was on in the 18^th century? Look at some of her neighbours as a control group? Bhutan, Afghanistan and Nepal remain far less developed. You may say this is because they are mountainous and landlocked. But this also gave them the advantage of being almost impregnable and therefore better able to concentrate on development as their military security was all but guaranteed.

Dadabhai Naoroji wrote ‘The Drain: un-British rule in India.’ He noted that wealth flowed from India to the UK. Even ‘the old man of India’ as he was known illuminatingly acknowledged that India was morally and materially indebted to the United Kingdom. The British had been pacificators and builders of India. The costs of doing so were defrayed by India paying the salaries of those who assisted them. Intra-hemispheric trade blossomed under British rule. That was beneficial. Mutuality of benefit it a hard concept to get across to Marxists as many Indian nationalists were.

The Suez Canal allowed British trade to reach the West more speedily. Had it not been in British hands it might have been closed to Indian traffic. An overland trek would not be a good way to expedite flourishing commerce. The Cape of Good Hope route was too long.

That the Republic India remained united since 1947 and did not fragment is a testament to the mettle of the institutions founded by the Raj. That the second largest population in the world has managed to remain united despite is bewildering diversity is in part due to the British Raj. It goes without saying that since 1947 most of the credit for managing to preserve the oneness of India is down to the Indians themselves.

Indian nationalist discourse’s presupposition that India was entitled to secession from the empire bites back. If India had the right to secede from a large unit do India’s constituent states not have the same right?

Why would so many Indians have willingly given up their lives to serve the Raj. They were not so naïve as to participate in a scheme if it were defrauding them.

THE RAJ WAS BETTER THAN WHAT PRECEDED AND SUCCEEDED IT

We are often told that India had democracy long before the UK. That is true of parts of India in the very distant past. But this soon fell prey to the absolutizing tendencies of rulers after Ashoka.

Prior to the EIC there were only dynastic states. The lineages of these were often intertangled. But after the EIC and the British Raj established India is became a rational-legal state even though it had a monarch. The rechtstaat in India continues to this day. That is why unlike many countries in Asia, India has the rule of law. Arbitrary government reigns in many other lands.

Previous Indian polities had come into existence by elbowing others aside. They did not establish parliamentary institutions when they supplanted other regimes. They had no mission for the betterment of their subjects. This stands in stark contrast to the British Raj’s avowed purpose after 1857.

After 1947 the borders drawn by Sir Cyril Radcliffe and his predecessors were the taken for granted frame of reference. That is an accomplishment of the Raj. India’s unity within that was seen to be self-evident. Almost all people there had achieved full absorption within the Indian State.

India had been ruled by foreigners for centuries before the first Briton sighted India. The Mughals and before them the Lodhi dynasty were invaders and conquerors. They spoke a foreign tongue. They were an alien faith to most Indians. Britons were hardly much more foreign than the Mughals or the Lodhis.

The Mughal Empire was a dynastic state. Delhi was an incredible metropole. But the locus of power shifted to Agra, to Lahore, to Fatehpur Sikri and back to Delhi a few times. That signifies the chaotic nature of the empire. The provinces were held in vassalage. The subjects were the merest chattel. They had no rights. The traffic on humans were considered honourable. The state was not systematised.

The Mughals did not regard primogeniture as a requisite principle. This had the benefit of mostly able rulers coming to the Peacock Throne. This dynastic Darwinism meant there was survival of the fittest. It was literally survival since the Mughals sometimes practised fratricide like their Ottoman co-religionists. So much for Islam promoting family values! The lack of an established line of succession meant regular free for-alls. The periodicity of these power struggles enfeebled the empire. An unedifying scramble for the throne also meant that bribery became engrained in the system as princelings would offer douceurs to praetorians and the vizier. The Mughal Empire was necessarily erratic due to the inherent instability of its succession. A smooth transference of power was the exception not the norm. Inter-monarchic approval played no role in conferring legitimacy on the Mughals.

The Mughal Empire gradually withered. It was falling apart under the weight of its own contradictions as Marx might have said. An assertively Islamic regime, it failed to convert most of its subjects to its faith. Its legitimacy was grounded on right of conquest, but it could not defend its borders. It was not even ambling towards progress in any sphere when it went into terminal decline in the early 18^th century. It lost its clout when it lost its knout.

Even today the Islamic Republic of Pakistan casts its mind back to the Mughals. It lays claim to being a lineal descendant of the Mughal State. General Muhammad Zia ul Haq said he wished to be a latter-day Aurangzeb: a true soldier of Islam. That is why he saw Hindus as idolaters. Pakistan which spent relatively little time under British tutelage did not have sufficient time for parliamentary institutions to bed down. Hence the unacceptance of pluralism. This is a cause of infelicity for Pakistanis even if they do not recognise it.

By stark contrast the British Raj at its apex in 1914 showed little sign of trouble. It was durable. Had it not been for Britain’s fatal decision to fight a superpower in 1914 and against in 1939 there is every reason for the supposition that the Raj would have lasted decades or even centuries longer. It was not running out of steam. It was the cost and the casualties of these wars that enfeebled the Raj. Moreover, Britain’s foes assisted the anti-British forces in India.

By the mid-20^th century European colonialism was said to have reach obsolescence. It became a self-fulfilling prophecy.

It is paradoxical that by Britain introducing parliamentarianism to India, Britain was sowing the seeds of the Raj’s downfall. But parliamentary governance was not what Britain’s deadliest enemies such as Subhas Chandra Bose envisioned for an independent India.

It is a truism that history is an endless chain of cause and effect. That is why counterfactual history is often imponderable. One can never but sure what would have happened but for British rule. But we shall try to conjecture.

In 18^th century Britain there were already some egalitarian movements. These had no analogue in India. The Indian intelligentsia was not interested in the issue.

The Raj was to burst in twain the galling yoke of thraldom. But the Raj gets no credit for this. Untouchability was only undermined by the Raj.

Britons had no technological advantage when they arrived in India. Technology was only ambling forward.

In 19^th century there was no movement to abolish slavery until the British introduced it. There was no movement for the emancipation of women. Suttee (widow burning) was condemned by only a handful of Hindu reformers. It is true that most widows were not burnt. However, there were still at least several thousand women who were burnt alive each year in early 19^th century India. There is no reason to suppose that any of these abuses would have been ended in the 19^th century without beneficent British rules. In all likelihood, these barbarities would have continued well into the 20^th century. The British reintroduced human rights to India. Emperor Ashoka invented human rights many centuries earlier. But his humane rulings were soon effaced.

By the late 19^th century, the United Kingdom was in many respects the world model. Liberals and reformers the world over, looked to it for inspiration. Its parliamentarianism was envied by many. The UK was also a world leader in industry and science until outpaced by the United States in the 1870s.

We are often told that the British committed genocide in India. It takes some chutzpah when the population increased so markedly under British dominion. As Churchill said whilst American Indians saw their numbers shrink to a fraction of what they had been before the pale face landed in America, the Indians pullulated alarmingly. Indian tenderly multiplied under beneficent British rule. Suffice it to note that a population cannot possibly grow under genocide. Such a flagrantly false claim by Indian nationalists gravely impugns their honesty. They cannot be given the doubt when they make statements that are unfalsifiable.

Britannic inventions perhaps unwittingly undermined the caste system. Aboard a train the castes could not be kept apart. Of course, a dalit’s shadow could fall upon the Brahmin. To be fair, some members of the priestly caste wanted this pernicious system of caste discrimination done away with in the 19^th century.

There was at first a subtle shift in caste relations. The caste system has not disappeared even now. But its death knell was sounded under British rule. Castes are antique but lugubriously they are not anachronistic in India.

India did not have the solidity of a single community under the British epoch. The English languages was a mode of communication which led to a meeting of minds between Indians of all regions. Indeed, it was a language for the educational aristos. By 1947 no more than 5% of Indians spoke English even to a low level. The crucial thing about the English tongue is that it is neutral between the states. In 1947 at most 20% of people spoke Hindi including those who spoke it badly. The Hindi speakers were all in north central India. Although English had fewer speakers the vital thing is that they were the elite and were scattered all across the country. That helped to forge links and a sense of togetherness. The language was equally alien to all. Therefore, no one was privileged by his language being chosen and no one was disrespected by his language being disregarded.

The English language was perhaps to lead to the unravelling of the very Raj that introduced the language. Congress leaders communicated almost exclusively in the language of the imperial metropole. This gave them sociological solidity. It was an incalculable gift to a very heterogenous people.

By speaking English in the decades after the dissolution of the Raj, an Indian would situate himself among the elite. Yet the time has come when the language is so widely comprehended that it no longer signifies the elite states that it once did.

Many a ferocious indictment of British perfidy was penned in English. The oracy of Nehru was notable for his pukka pronunciation.

India was bewitched by the fake fakir in the shape of M K Gandhi. This fraud announced many a ‘fast unto death’. It never ended in his death. He was a for war before he was a pacifist before he was for war before he was a pacifist again. His putative naivete about the Japanese shows that he cannot be taken seriously as a political thinker. Someone as sophisticated as him cannot have believed that ‘lathi play and the like’ would have stopped the Nipponese war machine. Was it sheer caprice that led him to propose even that? Was there no linkage between his saying British rule was ‘satanic’ and his willingness to let his people fall to one of the cruellest empires in history? Here was a man who urged the UK to surrender to Hitler even when the war was going well. Hitler incidentally had urged Lord Halifax to shoot Gandhi.

Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi’s behaviour towards his nieces was suspect to say the least. His walk sticks, as he called them, appear to have been subject to molestation. But he is on a pedestal. For some Indians, he can never be criticised.

His antediluvian attitude to science was plain daft. He was against Western medicine because it made men ‘effeminate’ and used spirituous liquor. That was often alcohol to clean skin before an injection. He was also against life-saving injections as violence. Happily, India had spurned the absurd jabbering of this Luddite loony. Ruefully, almost all writing on Gandhi is hagiographic in nature. It is high time that he was scrutinised with detachment. He needs to be de-canonised. Gandhi was not all bad. The ill-fated Gandhi was going to a prayer meeting to offer up his orisons for reconciliation with Pakistan when he was gunned down by a Hindu zealot Narayan Apte and Nathuram Godse. When M K Gandhi was smitten by bullets India was plunged into grief and gnashing of teeth. The bewailing his death was genuine.

The trope about Gandhi’s humanitarianism is not entirely to be believed. As I noted earlier, he did much to immiserate his people.

Happily, India has spurned Gandhi’s daft preachments. The country has not returned to a pre-industrial age. It does not follow his pacifist naivete. The people are more decorously attired than bapuji would have them.

India has since produced many a masterpiece of English language novels. The grandeur, hauteur and sonority of upper class Indo-English accents are a rare treat for me.

In teeming slums many would die of treatable illnesses because they believed Gandhi’s preachments against medicines. He has much to answer for.

The Gujarati barrister’s scribbling is far from engrossing. I do not recommend his book My Experiments with the truth. As well as being disingenuous he was also a bore.

Mohandas Karamchand was unsparing of his own nation. He noted that India was to a considerable extent peopled by bigots. He deprecated the noisome racialism that some whites felt towards Indians. However, he said that was trifling compared to the monstrous mistreatment which some upper caste people inflicted on the Dalits (untouchables). The profundity of his observation is not pondered enough. He called the untouchables by the name of harijans – children of god. Many held that Dalits were to be only hewers of wood and drawers of water. They were to be kept subordinate. They were clubbed insentient for centuries such that some became servile. The lumpenproletariat there had gained nothing from pre–British India. Being a Dalit was not a hindrance to seeking British employment.

There were always people who would inculcate superstitions into the masses in every country. In India rationalists began to debunk conmen in the British era. Unfortunately, India is still plagued by these faith fraudsters. But it was the introduction of modern science that set India on the path to stopping these tricksters from fleecing the gullible. Yes, India had been scientifically ahead centuries earlier. But by the 18^th century it was far behind the United Kingdom.

The pre-British Indian State was founded by conquest as almost all states are. People all over India did not suddenly one day in ancient times decided to be Indian and to be united. A magnate in one part of the country started to subdue the others. ‘Twas ever thus. North Central India was the locus of power. It is the most fertile zone in India. The Gangetic Plain was the fulcrum of Indian History. Whoever held this plain, held India. It took a mighty army to do so because the area is so flat that it is hard to defend. That is why the capitals of India have always been in this zone. Delhi, Agra and Fatehpur Sikri are there. The holiest sites in Hinduism and in Sikhism are in North Central India: Varanasi (Benares), Amritsar and others.

India was itself an empire. How did it come to rule some of Afghanistan? A claim of national sovereignty cannot be asserted by those who have deprived others of the same.

Shashi Tharoor states that the British Raj was illegitimate since it had mutineers blown to kingdom come from the mouths of canon. Capital punishment was uncontroversial in 1857. It was universally practised. Execution by this method was humane in that death was instantaneous. The mutineers suffered less than British criminals who suffered the short drop method of hanging which caused death by slow asphyxiation. All executions worldwide were in public back then. Blowing people from canon had the virtue of being an effectual deterrent since it was so dramatic. Slower and more gruesome methods of execution were employed by pre-British Indian states. But if the death penalty de-legitimises a state, then pre-British India was also illegitimate according to Tharoor. By his rationale independent India is also illegitimate since it still has capital punishment. His own Congress Party retained the death penalty. The United Kingdom abolished capital punishment over half a century ago. Therefore, judging by Tharoor’s own rationale the UK is legitimate. Ergo as the UK is legitimate and post-British India is not, then the former should rule the latter.

Dr Tharoor’s unhealthy fixation with execution is also an example of trying to make an image an argument. It is the formal logical fallacy of an appeal to emotion. This is contemptible. Were we to conjure up images of terrorists executed by India would that make the cause of India’s foes into a righteous one? Of course, it would not.

Dr Tharoor is overfond of vehemently vituperating the British Raj. Each Brit bashing broadside he delivers wins him another 10 000 votes. The incorrigibly ignorant fall for such demagoguery.

The dissolution of the Raj was accompanied by massive scale bloodletting. The Punjab was turned into a hecatomb. The hundreds of thousands of Hindus, Sikhs and Muslims who were murdered were victims of anti-imperialism. Not one of these people slain in Partition was slain by a Briton.

Sir Winston Churchill foresaw that the independence of India would lead to massive scale religious violence and caste discrimination. He forewarned the people of India. He was a Cassandra. Once the calamity befell India he did not say, ‘I told you so.’

If India was so profitable for the UK it is odd that UK let it go. After the Second World War the UK had more need of money than ever. The British could have stamped out the independence movement in the 1930s totally. Congress was briefly banned. But why not ban it permanently? Its leaders were not killed. The British right of free expression and the right to protests were respected in India except when the public order made it exigent to hold these rights in abeyance.

Maintaining India was costly for the UK. The Conservative PM Disraeli had said the empire was ‘a millstone around our neck.’ Imperialism was not liked by everyone in the UK even at the height of the empire.

By the time that His Britannic Majesty granted independence to his Indian realm it was 1947. The British authorities had believed India was unready for democracy. Only around 20% of men were permitted to vote. The Dominion of India instantly gave the vote to all men and women.

Democracy takes a long time to evolve. People need decades or even centuries to learnt is intricacies.

You might say democracy works well in India. Corruption has often been endemic. Significant cheating has also been a serious problem at certain times and in particular places. This militates against the argument that India was in a ripe state for democracy in 1947. Back then only 20% of Indians could read. This figure was higher among males than females. The argument against universal suffrage was that illiterates cannot access and comprehend information. An uninformed choice is no choice at all.

Forget not that until 1947 India included Pakistan and Bangladesh. Pakistan has been under military dictatorships for much of its history. The rest of the time its intelligence agency the ISI has rigged elections. Bangladesh has also had coups and a military junta ruling it. Had these countries remained within India then perhaps democracy in India would not have survived.

It is true that some parts of India had had forms of democracy in the very distant past. But these had withered or been extirpated centuries before the advent of Britannic rule. These democracies were village panchayats. It is misleading to suggest that this was tantamount to the Westminster system that India has today. The early Indian democracies were not analogous to parliamentarianism. Indeed, in the early 19^th century the UK was emphatically not a democracy. It had parliamentary government but that was different to democracy at the time. In Britain only a burgher or owner of substantial realty was permitted to vote until 1832.

Indian troops murdered tens of thousands of civilians in India just after independence. You don’t believe me? Believe the Government of India then. The Government of India wrote a report on Operation Polo which was when India deprived the State of Hyderabad of its lawful independence. India launched a war of aggression against a sovereign state. Perhaps you think that Hyderabad should have become part of India. But the issue might have been resolved with spilling a single drop of blood. The government’s report on the massacres was so toxic that it was hidden for 65 years. Judging by independent India’s own standards the British Raj was more humane. This demolishes the core myth of Indian nationalism: that the Raj was brutal; and that independent India was not.

How is it that one massacre – Jallianwala Bagh – condemns the Raj to perpetual obloquy but numerous larger scale massacres do not do likewise for independent India? The ethical elasticity of Indian nationalist discourse must be impressive. How do these moral gymnasts explain that? The infantilism and vacuity of this ideology does it no credit. This essayist feels much scorn for it.

Was Jallianwala Bagh evil? Yes, it certainly was. That does not mean that many more crimes by independent India can be effaced.

At any time, India is battling to contain several insurgencies. This suggests that Indian unity is not as popular as Indian nationalists would have us believe. The Indian Army has been engaged in a counterinsurgency in Jammu and Kashmir since 1989. The army has deliberately killed several thousand civilians there. No army is perfect. Every army contains a few headcases. India has prosecuted some of those accused of such crimes. But many soldiers and police officers have got off scot free for murder. Yet again, the notion that post-British India is more moral than British India is proved to be a grotesque inversion of the truth.

India is arguably a concatenation of hundreds of nationalities. Each has its own particularities and peculiarities. The collective individuality of each community cannot be realised in such a gigantic state. Unsurprisingly some seek self-assertion through independence. Claiming that India has ‘always’ been a nation is one of the frailties of Indian nationalism. At least British nationalism does not have the debility that obliges it to pretend that the United Kingdom is especially ancient.

The mundanities that bind India together are often state agencies. These owe their life to the erstwhile Britannic administration. Indians may say that all Indians share an allegiance to Dr Ambedkar’s constitution. Where did he get the idea of a codified constitution? He studied in the UK.

India is by no means a replication of the United Kingdom. The British did not think that the UK could or should graft everything about itself onto the Subcontinent. Some nostra are not for export. As there was no equivalencing the two countries, it was patent that not all British institutions were applicable in India. Bigamy was never outlawed in Hindustan, for instance.

The centrifugal forces in India underscore another point. This vast polyethnic, polyglot and multireligious subcontinent only achieved even a semblance of nation-ness due to the British. The dynastic states that preceded Britannic dominion were hardly national in basis. They too were often polyethnic and multilingual. How India came to be united is an endless chain of cause and effect that is too long to be limned herein.

Having the British as a common foe allowed Indian nationalists to identify with each other. This formed a bond of comradeship. This is ironic as this is one service that Britons definitely did not wish to perform. Indians could define themselves as not being something else, the Other.

Nationalism has many manifestations. But India is unique in that it such an extraordinarily diverse nation can remain together. India did not appear to have a built-in capacity for nationhood. There was relatively little that united people. 80% of Indians are Hindus: that is as close as it gets. But Islam is not enough to unite most Muslims or even to keep East and West Pakistan together. Hinduism does not unite Nepal and India in a polity. Nehruvian secularism has forfended India making Hinduism the explicit core of identity but under Narendra Modi that might be changing.

Under the Raj civil liberties were sometimes suspended in extremis. The Republic of India, in its wisdom, has seen fit to do likewise. It has oft invoked British era legislation. President’s rule has been imposed on disorderly states. States have suspended civil liberties severally. If such measures when exigent were permissible for post 1947 India, then they must have been permissible in pre 1947 India too. Upholding order is no vice. India has not officially resorted to draconian measures. But unofficially it has engaged in large scale extrajudicial slayings of militants.

This essay does not suggest that the Government of India was also wrong to proclaim a state of emergency. President’s rule in certain states with the state legislature held in suspended animation was sometimes an apposite and proportionate response to grave public peril. As New Delhi has so often felt compelled to avail itself of colonial era statutes in such situations these statutes cannot be considered a malediction.

In Pakistan the constitution is more honoured in the breach than in the observance. Even then the Islamic Republic has often had lengthy periods of martial law. In war laws fall silent: Pakistan has been more or less in a state of war in the Khyber Pukhtunwala for decades. That is why Pakistani law has so often been held in abeyance. The Government of Pakistan has usually held itself absolved of obeying its own laws even in times of tranquility.

Many expressions of views are called seditious now. Opining can be perilous. All this suggests a certain thinness to civil liberty in India. Convoluted argumenta in favour of these laws are meritless.

Indian magnates oftentimes oppressed people before the British came. It is dubious that the British were worse. There are twists and turns in the history of every people. But it is hard to see how India would have evolved the institutions that it has today independently.

ADMITTING WRONGDOING

It is not the task of this piece of trash the reputation of the British Raj. Countless books, monographs and articles do that acerbically. However, it is apt to mention in passing some of the wrongful acts by the British Raj.

It would be infantile and naïve to assume that no one from one’s homeland has ever wronged a foreigner. It would be equally foolish to assume that one’s nation was forever in the wrong. A simple reading of history reveals that Ireland and Great Britain have sometimes been immoral in their dealings with other nation states. Since 1921 the major portion of Ireland left the UK. Nevertheless, Irishmen (including from the South) continued to serve the Raj until the hour of its dissolution.

It is the very beginning of maturity to cast a critical eye at one’s own people. That is however you define people. That could be by ethnicity, colour, faith, nationality or party. Stephen Decatur said ‘Our country, in her intercourse with other nations may she always be in the right, but our country. Right or wrong!’. This closed minded and chauvinistic attitude is to be deprecated. I have always fought against that mindset. The same cannot be said of Indian nationalists or nationalists of any stripe. A person must get beyond his or her emotional attachment to one’s own.

I strive for objectivity. Because of sentimentality towards the British Isles there is a risk that I shall underplay the horrors of the British Raj and overstate its accomplishments and virtues. I am not so childish or naïve to assumed that Ireland and Great Britain must automatically be on the right side of any dispute. The very beginning of maturity is to strive to be unemotional when making judgments about political and historical matters. Closed minded nationalism is as foolish as closed-minded anti-patriotism. For some Britons their greatest pride is their shame. They laud themselves for lacerating their country’s record. They think it makes them clever and broad-minded to demonise their nation’s past excessively.

Chauvinism is a pathology that leads to unspeakable crimes. Therefore, a useful corrective is to try to criticise one’s nation. But the very reverse of chauvinism can be just as bad.

Many of the negative aspects of the Raj are expatiated on by anti-Raj populists such as Tharoor. Can the devil speak true? Yes, he can occasionally. Not every word that the doctor writes is specious.

There was a dark side to the British Raj. I candidly acknowledge the wickedry of some Britons in certain times and in certain places. Millions of Britons and Indians served the Raj in 1947. Many millions more served it throughout its long romantic history. Amongst such an enormous number of people there was bound to be bounders.

The Ilbert Bill was withdrawn owing to the vociferation of many whites in India against it. The bill would have allowed whites to be tried by mixed race juries. Many whites resident in the Subcontinent suspected that Indians would relish sending a white down for a crime he had not committed. Nevertheless, the bill should have been allowed to pass.

The Jallianwala Bagh Atrocity is the most blatant example of evil in the British Raj. This was a shameful act. This act of gross violence did more to terminate the British Raj than any Congress protest. It is hard to feel human sympathy for Sir Michael O’Dwyer when he was assassinated because of his utter impenitence about the massacre. His post-factum apologia for this wholly unnecessary and egregious act of premeditated slaughter superadded insult to injury. It is painful to acknowledge that O’Dwyer was not just a Briton, he was an Irishman.

Brigadier General Reginald Edward Harry Dyer was the one who ordered his troops to fire into the crowd at Amritsar. His Balochis and Gurkhas obeyed the command. When I have observed that at Amritsar, Indians killed Indians this has not played well with an Indian audience. Some said that the Gurkhas were Nepali. That is true but some Gurkhas were recruited form the Nepali community of India.

Dyer unwittingly did more for the Indian independence movement than the Congress Party. Dyer so wrecked Indian faith in British justice that the Raj was probably doomed from the moment he ordered the Indian Army to open fire in Indian civilians.

The 347 years of British involvement in India are so often judged by its worst 10 minutes. This ghastly incident is totally unrepresentative of the Raj.

The Daily Telegraph as recently as 1997 essayed to defend the atrocity by noting that five British civilians had been murdered the day before and that several public buildings had been burnt. Two wrongs do not make a right. If the culprits for those murders had been caught that would have been commendable. But to exact vengeance on the general public was a monstrous thing to do.

The condescension that some Britishers showed towards Indians was unpleasant and reprehensible. Imbecilic notions of racial superiority were not uncommon.

During the Indian Mutiny, British troops and pro-British Indians murdered at least several hundred civilians. This was not a case of collateral damage. This people were often wilfully slain by soldiers who knew them to be civilians. John Nicholson was, I blush to mention, an Irishman. He was the author of many of these crimes.

In the 1770s the EIC increased tax in Bengal during a famine. This was a horrific thing to do. Even without the tax rise many would have died of starvation. We tend to forget just how malnourished most people in most countries were until well into the 20^th century.

There were famines under the Raj as there had been throughout Indian history. There was an Agriculture Department. The Raj tried to improve husbandry and acreage yield. Modern agronomical techniques were introduced. There were warehouses for famine relief. Food was distributed to save the famished. Canals were dug for irrigation. The transport network moved food to afflicted zones. Yet still people died. More should have been done to save people.

The Raj pursued racially discriminatory policies at times. This is of course reprehensible. The utility of the Raj to India cancels out some of this wrongdoing. The haughty and self-conceited attitude of some Britons was lamentable.

Even if a fulsome apology were issued and compensation paid then the UK would still not be redeemed in the eyes of all Indians. Why the UK must apologise to India, but the Government of India must not apologise to its own people for its crimes against them is a riddle I cannot answer.

WHAT IF IT WAS WRONG?

If the Raj was so evil, then those who served it were traitors. I have heard Indians say that every country has a few turncoats which is why some Indians served the Raj. If this so, then these men can be tried for waging war against India. This offence still carries the death penalty.

One of India’s most decorated generals was Sam Manekshaw. He served the Raj. Should he have been executed? He was born in Amritsar a few years after the massacre.

There are those who say the British Raj is extant. The Naxalites say that and so did Rajiv Dixit. They are the real white supremacists: those who believes that whites rule India despite virtually no whites being there.

The Republic of Indian reaches out to the tribals. It wishes to acculturate and assimilate them. The tribals are scornfully called junglies by some. The notion that the state should reach out is a ramification of the Raj.

As the Republic of India took no action against those who worked for the Raj it shows that the government did not believe its own vapid rhetoric about India having been under enemy occupation. Soldiers, sailors, policemen and civil servants who zealously served the Raj were not penalised in any way after 1947. Independent India is a legatee of the Raj in that it gained from the expertise of these faithful servants of British India.

Why is it that Indian nationalists are still haunted by the Raj? There was relatively little griping about it in the first few decades after its termination. Queen Elizabeth II has been on several state visits to India. This is the supreme expression of amity between sovereign states. Such an invitation is only extended when there are not outstanding issues to be resolved. India has affirmed several times that there are no such problems. Yet in the last few years rabble rousers have sought to cause disharmonious relations with the United Kingdom.

The UK has given huge sums in aid since 1947. British charity workers have gone to India to work with underprivileged people. The UK has often sided with India in diplomatic disputes with other countries. The cordiality between the two nation states is imperilled by irresponsible ranting by the more inadequate sort of politician.

Much contumely is poured on Britain’s head because of Partition. India was rent in twain. That was not the UK’s wish or desire. It is facile to claim it was London’s doing. Partition was accompanied by saturnalia of looting and an orgy of raping as well as mass murder. But it was all Indians who did that. However, the British Army should have done more to stop it and shoot marauders.

There was an epoch when India was far more advanced than the British Isles. An Indian civilising mission to these islands would have been excellent. De-barbarising the British would have been a service to mankind.

The chastisement of rebels sometimes went too far. Sometimes the British Raj was bad. The aim of reprisals was to ensure there would be no repeat performance of 1857. There was little recidivism.

If on balance the Raj was wrong, then the UK should apologise.

CONCLUSION

We shall perhaps be able to return a final verdict on the British Raj only centuries in arrear. The Owl of Minerva takes wing only at dusk. It seems that the Raj was serendipitous for India.

Pax Romana was dissolved in Britannia so many centuries ago that people are able to analyse it objectively. I pay tribute to the tens of millions of men and women (mostly Indian) who served the British Raj.

In 1936 Benedict O’Gorman Anderson was born at Kunming, China. His birth in the Far East was possibly why he was scintillated by this region for his entire life. Benedict was born to an Irish father and an English mother. The father was working for the customs service. Pursuant to the unequal treaties, Western officials were in control of customs.

Benedict’s father had been sent down from Oxford just before the First World War. He had then joined the customs service and been posted to Cathay. When the Great War broke out this young man wished to volunteer for the colours. However, customs officers were too precious to risk. He was not allowed to enlist in the British Army or Royal Navy. Ironically, being expelled form university probably saved his life.

Two years after the birth of Benedict a brother named Perry followed. Then a sister was born.

Because of the Second World War, the Andersons relocated to California. The Andersons spoke with British upper class accents. In the United States this led to some bullying. The children soon adopted American accents.

When the Second World War ended the Andersons returned to the British Isles. More specifically they resided in County Waterford, Ireland. His American accent seemed very strange to people. There was almost no travel from the United States to Ireland in those days. Some people travelled from Ireland to the USA but almost no one came back.

Benedict has been told he was British: this was Irish and English. He discovered that most people in Ireland strenuously rejected the word ‘British’ for themselves. His Irish background was atypical. Some of his family were Catholics and some were Protestants. Catholics were the preponderance of the Irish population. Protestant were a small minority in Waterford. They were seen as a people apart from the mainstream community. Some of his father’s ancestors had come from Scotland in the 18^th century. Some of Benedict’s ancestors had wanted Ireland to sever all links with Great Britain. Some had been rebels. Others had been Home Rule politicians. One of his forbears had been a nationalist Member of Parliament.

Benedict was a child of prodigious intellectual capacity. Classics were the main subject in his schooling. He mastered Latin and Ancient Greek with celerity. He was also a bibliomaniac. Perhaps his exposure to several tongues by the age of seven had made him esurient for language. He was to amass an awestriking word hoard.

Eton was and is regarded as the foremost school on the planet. Benedict went there in 1949. It was at Eton that he discovered a treasury of European literature. His brother was to follow two years later. Benedict flourished academically. He was stupor mundi. He did not fare well at sports. In some ways Benedict and his sibling were the odd ones out. Most boys there were much wealthier than the Andersons. Most Etonians lived in the London or the Home Counties. The Andersons were unique in living in the Republic of Ireland.

After Eton, Benedict went to Cambridge University. There he read classics. He showed no affection for his school and university. He seldom ever returned to either.

Whilst Benedict was at school, he followed the dissolution of empires with intense curiosity. During his adolescence India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Myanmar (Burma) became independent. The same happened to Indonesia. He noticed the anti-colonial movement gathering pace in Africa. He felt sympathy for this movement. He was liberal left but did not identify with a party. Benedict was repulsed by racialism. Though he was a rebel by political inclination he was never contumacious or bumptious.

It seemed to many in the mid 1950s that the British Empire had a long way to run. That was why the United Kingdom took the trouble to extirpate Mau Mau. That was why the United Kingdom agreed with France and Israel to attack Egypt over the Suez Canal. Few in the British Isles questioned the efficacy or ethicality of white rule in South Africa. Benedict had no truck with tales of the splendiferous empire. He considered it to have been created by caterans. He was like one of his gurus A J P Taylor, a man who had strong views but held them weakly. In eviscerating imperialism Benedict was decent enough to acknowledge truths which militated against the case he was making. He noted that the British had sometimes acted as conservators of cultural heritage in their colonies. Not everything the metropole had done in the colonies had been calamitous, wrongheaded or unjust. However, Benedict insisted that racialism was the cardinal belief of imperialism and was therefore inherently illogical, unfair and foredoomed.

Benedict was the sort of unthreatening youth who might even have been a cicisbeo in former times. He was urbane, sophisticated, understatedly charming, well-dressed, self-effacing, debonair, unfailingly considerate and a good listener.

In 1956 Benedict went to study in the United States. He enrolled at Cornell University. His studying in the USA did not make him any less caterant in his excoriation of the United States. He had developed a fascination with Indonesia. This archipelago is a treasure trove of languages, cultures and subcultures.

At Cornell, Benedict did a PhD on Indonesia. In the 1960s he started to travel to Indonesia. He commenced learning Bahasa Indonesia.

Languages were a gift of Benedict’s. In fact, he was a hyperpolyglot. In addition to his native English he learnt Latin, Greek and French at school. Then he achieved mastery in Indonesian, Tagalog, Thai and Javanese.  Some of these are among the trickiest languages for an anglophone. He had a useful knowledge of Dutch, German, Spanish and Portuguese. His acquirement of magistery in these languages was all the more astonishing accomplished in his 40s! That is well after it is said the mind closes to new languages as the brain has lost its plasticity. This Irish Mezzofanti was capable of delivering a tongue lashing in Indonesian to leftist parties of Indonesia for giving Suharto an easy ride. He could speak demotic Indonesian or in high flown Indonesian. His sister who worked for Amnesty International was similarly talented. She was flawless in half a dozen obscure languages such as Albanian.

The whole of Benedict’s career was spent at Cornell. He was made a professor. He published a plethora of well-received scholarly articles in peer reviewed journals. His books were also acclaimed by fellow academics as superbly scholarly. He was soft-spoken, bonhomous, easy going and bore his erudition lightly.

In his 1960s visits to Indonesia, B. Anderson met many Indonesians who had fought against Dutch colonial rule 1945-49. He was an outspoken admirer of President Achmed Soekarno. The spelling of that surname was changed to Sukarno. In 1965 a huge wave of anti-communist killings took place. As Sukarno allowed this, Benedict was rancorously disillusioned. He said it was, ‘rather like discovering someone you love is a murderer.’

Because Benedict associated with communists in Indonesia, he provoked the wrath of the authorities in the late 1960s. He was permanently banned from the country.

Dr Anderson noted the iron that Soekarno damned the Dutch for making Indonesia a colony but dedicated his life to preserving the unity of that same Indonesia that only existed because of the Dutch. Benedict Anderson overlooked the fact that Soekarno only achieved his goal because of another empire: the Japanese.

In 1981 Professor Benedict Anderson published his magnum opus: Imagined Communities. It is a book that touched on anthropology, geography, history, philology and ethnography. The range of disciplines is indicative of Benedict’s intellectual scope and versatility.  Seldom have so many magisteria been seamlessly interwoven so elegantly in a single tome. In Imagined Communities Anderson quotes a dozen languages such as Italian, French, Spanish, Latin, Dutch, German, Tagalog and Bahasa Indonesia. Oftentimes, he does not translate them. He blithely assumed that his readership would be conversant with them. In this book Anderson propounded his claim that nationalism as we know it stated not in Europe as many erroneously presume but in America in the 18^th century. His skewered the Eurocentric presuppositions of many scholars such as orientalists. He noted that the Eurocentric notion that nationalism is predicated on language is often specious. He furnished numerous counterexamples. As he noted in the United States and in Latin America the language of the metropole was as he said, ‘not even an issue’ in separatist insurrectionary actuations.

People assumed nations to be ancient, but most are very recent creations. No nation is eternal. There was a time when no nation existed.  There shall be a time when many contemporary nations are lost to remembrance as many past ones have been.

A number of paradoxes are identified in the work. Each nation shares common features with the others, yet each nation is unique. Particularism is vital to nationality, but each nation shares at least some of these traits with its neighbours.  Nations are all about dividing and boundaries. But the real boundary spatially, ethnically, linguistically and temporally can seldom be clearly defined. The more dubious a nation’s boundaries are, the more vociferously they are asserted to be ironclad. The official boundaries and the actual boundaries to not always coincide. Anderson stated that a nation is an artificial construct. It has to be imagined by the elite at first. The masses are gradually inculcated into the cult of nationality.

Anderson observed that nation-ness is founded partly on an imagined commonality. It is often contingent on what are self-consciously myths. There are also some beliefs fervently asserted by nationalists that are falsehoods, but the nationalists are in denial about that. Sometimes a nation therefore needs literal imagining in order to exist. Nations require national acts of remembrance. But even more vital than that are collective acts of forgetting. Selective amnesia is needful to wipe the memory of atrocities committed by one segment of the nation against another. Crimes committed by the nation against others are to be de-emphasised if not obliterated from the public mind. The recentness of the nation’s foundation is often to be glossed over. That the nation was created by outsiders and defined by foreigners usually must be buried or even denied. A teleological approach to be past it adopted. Historians who are nationalists tend to read history backwards. They overdetermine subsequent outcomes as though certain things were predestined or foredoomed. They simply presume that the formation of their nation was predestined and desirable. They become partisan. Emotion always occludes judgment. Therefore, the nationalist is injudicious. His mind is befogged by chauvinism and jingoism.

Nations also need images to exist. They need a leader, iconic buildings, flags, emblems, sometimes a national plant or animal and often coinage. The map image is vital which is why it is so often displayed. Seeing it on the nightly weather forecast and on the classroom wall also seared this into the collective consciousness.

One of the standing puzzles of Imagined Communities is that although its author scorns nationalism is fallacious and perilous he is preoccupied with nationality. Whenever he mentioned some in the tome he invariably noted the person’s nationality.

Saying anything laudatory about nationalism had been seen to be trahison des clercs in the 1970s in the leftist circles in which Benedict moved. However, Benedict was never one for mindless conformity. He did not stint in limning the untold horrors wrought by nationalism. Yet he noted that nationalism can be the motor force for love, creativity, construction and all kinds of praiseworthy endeavours. It is as fertile a muse as romance. He observed that in the 20^th century alone tens of millions of people had been willing and even eager not only to kill but also to die for their nation. He closed the book pitying, ‘the poverty of such imaginings.’

Imagined Communities has become so renowned in academic circles that within a few years it was known simply as IC. This tome has become locus classicus for all those wishing to study the phenomenon of the modern nation-state.

IC was epoch making. A Marxist might even say it was world historical.

In 2001 I attended a meeting of the Asia-Pacific Society at Oxford University. I was due to go on a jaunt around South-East Asia, so I thought it meet to learn more about the region. The people at the meeting were mostly from countries such as Singapore, China and Malaysia. An old white British man came to address us. This white haired, cleanshaven and bespectacled gentleman appeared to be in his sixties. The man spoke in Received Pronunciation but not of the unwittingly comical variety. He was introduced as having been born in Far Eastern country: I forget which. His father was working on government service there. He spoke vividly about Indonesia. The old man noted that during the independence struggle Indonesians who wished to signal support for independence would use the Rupiah as currency and not the Netherlands East Indies Guilder.

The old man said the United States needed an anti-communist regime there in the 1960s. The USA would have found it impossible to prosecute its war in Indochina if there were another large communist nation in south-east Asia.

The speaker noted that the Indonesian Ambassador was due in a few days’ time. He said that the ambassador would claim that everything that the speaker said was a lie.

In 2005 Anthony James mentioned Imagine Communities. He told me of this fabulous book that exposed the fragilities and the artificialities of nationalism.

It was not until years later that I cast my mind back to that meeting. That must have been Benedict Anderson. I must find out if he was the one who addressed the society that day.

Benedict remained an Irish citizen all his life. Latterly he became an American citizen. That seemed to be solely a flag of convenience for him as he lived in the United States for decades. He eschewed all flag waving and displays of nationalism.

Perry, Benedict’s brother, edited New Left Review. Perry became an academic in California.

In 2015 Benedict Anderson died in his sleep at Bangkok. Born in China, died in Thailand: this English, Scots, Irishman was a citizen of the world. A memorial service was held for him at Cornell. It gratifies me very considerably that I heard his lecture.

Urbane, unmarried, courteous, genuine, unhurried, gentlemanly, compassionate, inquisitive, soft spoken, droll and erudite: Benedict was the archetypal renaissance man. They don’t make them like that anymore.

There are now many different kinds of internet sites and apps offering medical advice, but they all share one thing in common: they do more harm than good.

Why might online sources of medical advice be said to ‘do more harm than good’? Present a counter-argument. To what extent do you agree with the statement?

An online source of medical advice could do more harm than good because the advice offered is erroneous. These sites might not be regulated. Someone who is not professionally qualified might be running the site and have written the guidance. Furthermore, these sites rely on people accurately describing their symptoms.

People cannot always be trusted to do so. People can misdiagnose things. Some people are alarmists or fantasists. They make conditions out to be much worse than they really are. They might suffer from Munchausen’s Syndrome or Munchausen’s Syndrome by proxy. The former is where a person imagines that he or she has a medical condition. The person might put a great deal of time and effort into reading about symptoms so he or she can describe them in textbook languages. The person might even fake symptoms. Such a person can present himself or herself to a clinic or hospital and be very convincing because he or she knows exactly what to say. The patient might be genuinely convinced that he or she is suffering from the illness despite the patient having fabricated some of the symptoms. The person is faking it because he or she is seeking secondary gain. The person wants attention, sympathy and a sense of importance. The person might be afflicted with a martyrdom complex and like the idea of being seen to suffer.

Munchausen’s Syndrome by proxy is where a parent or carer believes that a child or someone in his or her care has an illness. This is the same as Munchausen’s Syndrome except that the person driving the syndrome does not claim to suffer it himself or herself.

These apps and websites can easily be abused by people who imagine that they or their children suffer from an ailment. People can be very excitable and might panic. These sites sometimes offer advice about how to cure an illness without obtaining a prescription. People can treat themselves with things that are not prescription drugs. These treatments can cause illnesses or aggravate illnesses. This self-treatment is not taking place under any medical superintendence.

The counter argument is that anything that disseminates medical knowledge among the general public is to be applauded. There are a few foolish people who misuse any information. However, the generality of those who look to these sites and apps do so sensibly. They are able to diagnose their own illness and treat it sensibly. This can be something as simple as resting, drinking more water or taking light exercise. It might involve counsel about food or drink to avoid or perhaps to make sure that the person keeps warm. Sometimes a patient discovers that he or she is not ill at all.

There are some urgent illnesses that patients find out they have using things like apps and websites. For instance, take meningitis. If treated quickly the person can make a full recovery. However, if a person is not treated it can kill the person in 72 hours. It is vital that the person realises that this is a deadly illness and goes to accident and emergency fast. The app or website can make the patient apprehend the gravity of the situation immediately and to take action. Otherwise the patient might put it down to a bad headache and tarry. Even when the consequences are not fatal the person can be left brain damaged and have to have limbs amputated.

Apps and websites about health also triage minor conditions. It means that clinics and hospitals are not clogged up with a huge number of patients with trifling ailments that will clear up on their own without any intervention. This means that much pressed doctors and nurses then have sufficient time to treat people who really need care.

In conclusion, this essay largely disagrees with the title statement. Whilst there are some unwise people who will misuse and misunderstand information, on balance the desirable results of informing the public about their health surely outweigh the disadvantages.

It is nigh on a decade since Christopher Hitchens passed from the quick to the dead. As the world’s best-known atheist, he would be the first to say that he has not gone to any hereafter. His only immorality, he said, would be his three children. But perhaps he is mistaken. He may well have attained a literary immortality. He is one of the four horsemen of the anti-religious cause. Christopher Hitchens was a pugnacious, demosthenic rhetor and never a glib one.

Hitchens was so committed to the idea of living but a single life that he refused to have any exequies. His donated his carcass to medical science. It was an admirable bequest in many regards. However, his numberless admirers were deprived of a ceremony, of closure. He has no grave and no memorial.

Public intellectual is the label often appended to Hitchens. Mercifully, he was not a desiccated academic, producing articles of tedious pedantry couched in unreadable scholarese in utterly forgettable dusty journals. He was more middle brow and therefore eminently accessible. His work is enthralling and brimful of vim. His asperity towards his nemeses made his work all the more captivating. He was the superlative polemicist.

As a person Christopher was affable and engaging. He was possessed of an inimitable voice which bellowed out his uncompromising opinions. His voice was coarsened by decades of cigarette smoking and consuming heroic quantities of hard liquor. This lent a gravelly gravitas to that rich baritone. Though he was winsome he was never one to mince words.

Was Hitch a gadfly or a mere barfly? Some panned him as a controversialist. Others contemned him for his alcohol abuse. But for much of the freethinking movement he was and is totemic. Perhaps his celebrity status went to his head. He quoted approvingly Gore Vidal: never miss a chance to have sex or appear on TV?

Christopher’s joie de vivre was about friends, tobacco and alcohol: invariably together. It was to be the death of him. Bragging about his intake of these substances was one of his least attractive and most puerile traits. There was a streak of boyish bravado in him when it came to his self-destructive penchant. Perhaps he believed like William Blake, ‘the road of excess leads to the Palace of wisdom.’ He was certainly an aficionado of Blake’s poesy.

I wandered London in search of sites associated with C Hitchens. There is a bench upon which he filmed an interview in his hard hitting 1998 documentary: ‘Diana: the mourning after’. There is the door to the Private Eye office: he is seen going in there in that same documentary which he made in his trademark irreverent and combative style. His elan vital is sorely missed.

Hitchens was the author of some two dozen books on divers topics. He addressed himself to matters as eclectic as the Israel-Palestine Conflict, the works of Thomas Jefferson and the liberation of Iraq. The book on Iraq (The Long Short War) is one in which he lacerates the Ba’athists and their apologists.  He wrote sundry articles with aplomb on all sorts of issues. That gives you an indication of the breadth of the man’s talents and the catholicity of his interests. Reading his extraordinarily broad oeuvre is one of life’s benisons.

I trust it shall not be thought a belittlement of Hitchens to call him a controversialist. Many have dubbed him a contrarian but that does him an injustice. He did not take positions just to irk people or draw attention. His views were sincerely held. Likewise, the term provocateur would also be a misnomer. His foes were convinced that he was guilty of attention seeking perversity.

Because he was partisan, Christopher delighted in skewering his foes. His elegant character assassinations of those he hated were a rare treat to read. Almost everything he published was unputdownable. He lambasted figures from Jesus to George III to Mao to Stalin to Henry Kissinger to Princess Diana and Mother Theresa. In his countless articles he seemed to vindicate Henry Bulwer-Lytton’s maxim: the pen is mightier than the sword.

It was said of C Hitchens on one book’s dust jacket blurb, ‘there is simply no one else like him in Anglo-American letters’. Towards the end of his life Christopher H had acquired an enormous following. Though an avowed leftist he was held a remarkable allure for right wingers such as your humble servant. He became known as Hitch as his father had been. Indeed, he wrote a memoir entitled ‘Hitch 22’ a tongue in cheek allusion to Catch 22.

Hitch was acerbic, eloquent, oracular and forever frightfully farouche. His inattention to his appearance spoke volumes about his authenticity. He was candid enough to call himself a nicotine addict. If the truth be told he was also a functioning alcoholic.

The allure of Hitchens’ writing and his speechmaking was his uncanny ability to encapsulate things so succinctly. His phrasemaking was often aphoristic. His prognostications so often proved prophetic. As his dear friend Richard Dawkins said, Hitchens had a range of reference the like of which Dawkins had never seen; and Dawkins lived in Oxford. Hitch’s articulacy and verve was seldom equalled and never surpassed. He had an extraordinary knack of laying bare the bones of politicians or writer in but a few sentences.

Bon vivant is the epithet so often applied to Hitch. It was richly merited. By his 50s he was a voluptuary getting along on whiskey and ciggies. This hedonist certainly drank life to the lees. He was a model to us all. He was later to quip that if he had known he would live so long then he would have taken better care of himself. But what is the point in dying in perfect health? One might as well enjoy one’s body.

Socialist though he proclaimed himself to be until his mid-40s, Hitch always chose to avoid living in a socialist country. He had acquired a taste for luxury. This was one of many contradictions and hypocrisies to the man.

It is to my lasting regret that I never met Christopher Hitchens. I only came to know his oeuvre in 2008 when I read God is not great. In this tome he expatiated on the Wednesbury irrationality of all major religions and by implication the minor ones too. This infidel produced perhaps the best-selling antireligious tract of all time. The blasphemer must have got death threats for it.

Despite Hitch’s very decided views he was also fair minded. He would give credit where it was due to his foes.

Christopher was a reprobate perhaps because he believed he had but a solitary life. He was not going to squander it in self-denial.

Through Hitchens I learnt so many words. Loam, crepuscular, epicene, preachments and unwisdom were just a few of those he added to my lexis. His command of the language was masterful.

Why does Hitch still matter? Some of his messages are just as pertinent today as they were in his lifetime. That is to be lamented. The perpetual struggle between the Enlightenment and the forces of unreason goes on. Tyranny raises its ugly head. Unfreedom is as mighty as ever before. Therefore, it is as well to remind ourselves what civilised values are. We must pledge ourselves to unsleeping vigilance against those who would compromise away liberty.

Childhood

Christopher Eric Hitchens was born at Portsmouth, United Kingdom in 1949. He was the son of a Royal Naval officer. His status was middle middle middle class. On his mother’s side Christopher had Hebraic ascendants but he did not know that till he was almost 40. The Hitchens family went through the motions of Anglicanism. They were what might be flippantly called C and E: Christmas and Easter. His father was a Conservative voter; and his mother was a sentimental Labour type. His diminutive, serious-minded and austere father was dutiful and uninspiring. Christopher had a closer bond with his mother. Her gaiety and free spiritedness appealed to him.

The family soon moved to what was then the British colony of Malta. Here Christopher’s only sibling Peter was born. Peter was to make his name as a reactionary, prudish and pecksniffian journalist. It might seem that two more different men were never sprung from the same womb. But you would be wrong. They were both passionate provocateurs. Peter seemed to take after his father in severity, sartorial conventionality and judgementalism. Peter even sought to be commissioned in the Royal Navy: a chip off the old block. Hitchens minor was rejected on the grounds of ophthalmological deficiencies. Peter was for a time a red hot Trotsykist – not a Trotskyist as he would be quick to correct you.

The huge Royal Navy was there to keep the sea lanes of Pax Britannica open. But the empire was running out of colonies and cash. The two were related. As the empire was transmogrified into the Commonwealth the Royal Navy faced swingeing cuts.

The Hitchens family were posted to North Britain and later South Britain. Soon Hitchens pere left the Royal Navy to become a prep school bursar. It was the sort of dull post that suited a man of minor authority who suffered from an outsized sense of propriety and self-importance.

Christopher attended prep school. He shone academically. He had always taken the liveliest interest in current affairs. Why were French paratroopers in Algiers about to fly to Paris to launch a coup d’etat?

Hitch came to believe that the British Empire was wicked. The sooner it and all empires broke up so much the better.

The Leys School in Cambridge was selected for Christopher’s secondary schooling. It is called the Leys because of the Anglo-Saxon word ‘lea’ as in field. It sits hard by the River Cam in what used to be a flood meadow. This was one of the only posh Methodist schools around. Christopher was elated to be living in Cambridge. There he made two decisions that were to define his life. He identified as a Labour supporter and he shunned all religion.

When it was founded, the Methodist Church had been accused of irreligion by the Church of England. Therefore, a Methodist foundation had more sympathy for the underdog than one would have founded in an Anglican school. Every Sunday a Methodist minister from a gritty proletarian parish would preach to the boys. Through this they came to know something of the lives of the underprivileged. The Leys was not as purblindly pro-establishment as its Anglican equivalents. In the mid 19^th century, the Methodist Conference had decided to found a school for affluent Methodists in either Oxford or Cambridge. Eventually the choice fell on Cambridge.

In the 1960s racial bigotry was not uncommon in the United Kingdom. Apartheid was going strong in South Africa. Some Tories vociferated for it. It was a time when outspoken racial bigotry could even be an advantage in British politics. Hitch was totally opposed to ethnic prejudice in all its manifestations. He detested colour prejudice. He recognised that anti-Semitism is so often comorbid with other psychosocial delinquencies. Its pathology is common to so many anti-enlightenment and anti-intellectual movements. Those who espouse this egregiously damnable worldview are those who are cognitively subnormal and easy prey for conspiracy theorists.

A voracious reader from his earliest boyhood, educated himself. He drank deep of George Orwell. Orwell was to become a role model for him. Happily, their lifespans overlapped – just! Orwell died the year after Hitchens was born. The parallels between them are striking. Both were children of the empire. Orwell was born in a colony (India) though Hitchens was not but Hitchens’ father had been posted as far away as the Chinese port of Wei Hai Wei and Hitch later spent two years of his toddlerhood in Malta. Both grew up in middle class families with financial difficulties. Both of them attended independent boarding schools. They both joined the Labour Party and both made their names as writers. Both recognised the USSR for the oppressive hellhole it was.

Christopher was later to become enamoured of Orwell. He even wrote a book on him Why Orwell matters. It is perhaps Hitchens’ most unimpressive books, replete with banalities. It is hackneyed. There is little in it about Orwell that had not been said before.

At school Hitch signed up for every left-wing view going. He opposed the white man’s war in Indochina. He abominated apartheid and sought an end to white mastery in the rest of Africa.

Hitch was clearly and anti-establishmentarian. That did not mean he did not wish to benefit from the finest education going. He set his sites on Oxford. In the meantime, he was awkward for the school authorities.

The young Christopher had a late growth spurt. He was also a failure at sport but excelled academically. Such a combination means that he was not universally liked.

Dabbling in homosexuality almost got Christopher expelled. This was just after homosexual acts had been decriminalised. His father was not scandalised. Having been a naval officer he knew what young men deprived of female society got up to. Presumably, he hoped his son would grow out of this Ganymede behaviour as soon as he had access to the fair sex. If so; then he was not to be disappointed.

Oxford

In 1967 Christopher went up to Balliol College, Oxford. This is arguably the oldest college in Oxford University. For a century is had been among the most illustrious college in the university. In the late 19^th century Benjamin Jowett had made it mass produce colonial governors. There was a well known piece of doggerel about him;

Here come I, my name is Jowett.
All there is to know I know it.
I am Master of this College,
What I don’t know isn’t knowledge!

There was even a hymn composed entitled: For Balliol men now in Africa. In the early 20^th century is specialised in Liberal and Labour politicians. By a happy coincidence Balliol was also the college of Richard Dawkins who was later to become a close friend of Hitchens. Dawkins had ‘gone down’, in Oxford parlance, from Balliol a few years before Hitchens ‘went up.’

At Oxford, Christopher read Philosophy, Politics and Economics. For a budding politician or journalist, it was the subject to read. PPE, or modern greats as some called it, was designed to train people for leadership.

Christopher thrived at Oxford. Revolution was in the air and so was cannabis. He was never overly fond of drugs, but he smoked cigarettes like a chimney. He also acquired a taste for liquor. He threw himself into the Labour Club with his characteristic panache. He was forever participating in protests. He embraced the anti-apartheid cause and that of decolonisation. He was proud to say he was soixante-huitard even before 1968.

Hitchens family finances were not flush. Therefore, his father could extend him only a meagre allowance. Many undergraduates were in the same boat. Not everyone was from a wealthy household. Nonetheless, Oxford seems to have been elysian for him.

Though primarily straight, Christopher claimed to have bedded two men who later served in Thatcher’s cabinet. Possibilities have been identified. None have confirmed that they did it with him. There were not that many men who overlapped with him at Oxford and went on to be cabinet ministers under Thatcher. It was conjectured that one of those he has a horizontal encounter with was Hon William Waldegrave. The Provost of Eton crimsons at the very suggestion and embarrassedly denies it.

After Varsity, Hitch outgrew homosexuality inasmuch as his waistline did. Her later became so unappetising that only females would do it with him.

In the summer 1968 Hitchens went to Cuba. He was volunteering to work on the harvest there. He wanted to see if Castro had created a genuinely socialist society. Hitchens was a Trotskyite and despised the USSR as a degenerated socialist state. He loathed authoritarianism of whatever colour. Hitchens had decidedly mixed feelings about Castro. He still regarded it as preferable to the banana republicanism that prevailed in most of Latin America.

When Hitch was coming back from Cuba he found out about the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia. He was horrified that Moscow was snuffing out even the limited freedom permitted by Alexander Dubcek.

Mindless conformity was later on anathema to Hitch. However, in the 1960s his views seem to have been a checklist of leftist shibboleths.

In finals Hitch took a third class degree. This was awarded to perhaps the bottom 10% of undergraduates. This was a scandalously poor result from someone so erudite. Perhaps he was too busy with his activism. It was as though the whole of the remainder of his life he strove to live down his mediocre degree class. Perhaps that is why he larded his work with Latinisms. Was he laying it on a bit thick?

Journalism

Upon graduating Hitchens landed a job as a trainee BBC producer. He went down to London. In those days one could live well on such a salary. Rents were cheap as chips.

Before long Hitch was making waves in journalism. He did not tarry long as the BBC. He joined the New Statesmen. This far left weekly had short but penetrating articles about politics in the UK and abroad. He was often sent overseas on assignment. In the 70s he wrote an astonishingly flattering piece about Iraq under the Ba’athists.  Part of this was he took an instant liking to his government minder there. This hard drinking homosexual introduced himself as the Iraqi Oscar Wilde.

Clive James was the TV reviewer of the decade. The Australian Cambridge graduate came to be a friend of Hitchens. They bonded over their Marxist worldview and satirical take on society.

By the 70s Hitchens was in the International Socialists. This Trotskyist outfit spurned both the US and Soviet models. It derided both capitalism and Soviet style communism as morally bankrupt imperialisms. He had left wing views on every issue and was pro-abortion.

The key word in the Internationalist Socialists was the first one. Hitch was very cosmopolitan. He was later to downplay and eventually reject socialism and all ideologies. It was as his guru Paine said: my country is the world, and my religion is to do good.

Trotskyism was perhaps the worst thing about Christopher Hitchens. Trotsky was a mass murder just as bad as Stalin. The only difference is that Stalin jostled Trotsky aside in the 1920s. The Red Army under Trotsky committed many, many large-scale atrocities just like its foes. Trotsky commanded the troops at Kronstadt. Here fellow socialists, the sailors of the Red Navy, had mutinied over the oppression of the Bolsheviks. Leon Trotsky believed in executing hostages. He had no compunction about slaying civilians. He was violently intolerant and a total anti-democratic. Hitch never chose to live in a communist state because he was a bon viveur. Communist lands are airless. He would have had no scope for free expression there. It is noisome that he idolised Trotsky who published a book entitled, In defence of terror.

Hitch was bolshie in both politics and persona. His diatribes were eminently readable, but his manner was off putting to some. Nonetheless he was clubbable. Christopher was the life and soul of the party. He never said no to a drink. He was as engaging in person as he was upon the page.

Hitch tried to examine the Arab-Israeli Conflict dispassionately. As he saw it, he had no axe to grind other than he inculpated the United Kingdom for occasioning the conflict. As he did not know of his Jewish ancestors and ancestresses at the time his claim to complete objectivity can be taken at face value. When he later discovered his Hebraic heritage, he said it would not make on whit of difference to his judgment. He came to know Edward Said and co-authored a book with him on the plight of the Palestinian nation.

The marriage of Hitchens’ parents foundered. They believed in keeping up appearances. They did not divorce. They appeared as a couple when social occasions demanded it.

Hitch’s disdain was religion deepened when his mother took up with a defrocked Anglican priest. It got worse. The couple became votaries of a conman, sorry, guru. In the 60s and 70s fashionable people had a weakness for Indian spiritualism. This made them easy marks for an Indian who pretended to proffer some profundities in exchange for hard cash. Maharishi Yogi was the soi disant ‘perfect master.’ He was indeed perfect at mastering the art of convincing the gullible to hand over their money. This Chaucerian chancer was a type that Hitch was to meet in every religion. At G K Chesterton said, when people cease to believe in religion they do not believe in nothing: they believe in anything.

The romance between Hitchens’ mother and her paramour gang awry. They went to Athens. For some reason folie a deux occurred. Christopher later discovered his mother had tried to call him six times.

Christopher Hitchens found out that a woman with the surname Hitchens had been found dead in an Athenian hotel room. Hitchens is a highly unusual surname. Christopher was asked to go to Greece to see if the corpse was his mother.

It turned out that Hitch’s mother had committed suicide. It was an event so traumatising that 40 years later he would not reveal the content of the suicide note that she had written to him. Christopher was forever plagued by the thought that if she had got through to him by phone as she tried to do, she would not have been part of that suicide pact. He flew to Greece to identify his mother’s cadaver. He recalled having to cross a priest’s palm with silver to have her interred in sacred ground. Obsequies were performed for his mother Yvonne despite her having explicitly shunned the Christian faith and embraced faux Hinduism whilst living in sin with a man of the cloth. The high moral principle of not burying a self-destroyer in consecrated ground could be circumvented for a little hard currency. You might think that the Church has low moral standards. On the contrary: $50 is a very high moral standard. ‘Twas ever thus.

Despite Hitch’s sorrowful introduction to Greece, it was a land that he was to fall in love with. He visited many times and indeed wed a Greece. He reviled the colonels’ junta. Many of its Greek leftist friends were its victims. Hitch was furious but unsurprised that the US backed the military dictatorship saying that the cradle of democracy was unfit for democracy.

Later he visited Cyprus. It inspired him to write a history of the troubled island. He lamented how the home of Aphrodite had been a victim of colonial machinations several times over. He said that Archbishop Makarios was the only priest whom he ever took to.

Hitch married a Greek Cypriot in a Greek Orthodox Church. That might seem hypocritical for an evangelising atheist. The union was blessed with progeny. He was so philhellene that his firstborn was named Alexander. It pleased Hitch no end that his son spoke modern Greek and was a classicist. Hitch was so fixated with the classics that it is significant that his two daughters also had names relating to the Classical Mediterranean: Sophia (‘wisdom’ in Greek) and Antonia (a Latin name).

The first marriage of Hitchens must have ended badly. He wrote nary a word about it in his autobiography.

In the early 1970s Hitchens came to know Martin Amis. This was his closest friendship. Martin said it was like an unconsummated marriage or a love ‘whose month was ever May.’ Hitch was already enthralled by Kingsley Amis – the father of Martin. By befriending Martin, Hitch gained access to the father. Kingsley’s novels One Fat Englishman seemed to describe the character that Hitch later turned into. In one of Martin’s novels, Hitch was featured as a character.

The poet James Fenton was a dear friend of Christopher. It was a friendship that lasted a lifetime.

In the last couple of years of W H Auden’s life, Christopher came to know the celebrated poet. Christopher recalled that Auden – who was gay – took a shine to Kingsley’ Amis’ ‘’lovely young son’’ as Auden called him.

On an early visit to America, Hitch met Pelham Grenville Woodhouse. Like Stephen Fry, Hitch was an avid fan of P G Woodhouse the author of the Bertie Wooster series of novellas. Fry indeed had corresponded with Woodhouse whilst a schoolboy. As Woodhouse died in 1975, Fry never got to meet the great man.

Christopher spent time in Northern Ireland in the 1970s. The Troubles were erupting.  Hitch befriended Eamonn McCann in Derry. He rapidly came to the conclusion that the UK should jettison Northern Ireland despite the settled will of a high majority of the people there to remain within the United Kingdom. Hitch believed that the Six Counties should fuse with the Republic of Ireland. It was staggering that a secularist should want a secular province to be forced to unite with a quasi-theocracy. As a socialist he should not have wanted to deprive the people of Northern Ireland of the welfare they received as British citizens.

Despite his sympathy for Irish nationalism, Hitch had no allusions about the brutality of the IRA. He came quite close to being shot by them despite them knowing him to be a journalist.

By the late 70s Hitch was disillusioned with Labour. The British Army in Northern Ireland had abused terrorist suspects under a Labour Government. Therefore, Hitch wondered if the Tories would be better. The mistreatment of suspects is not to be condoned. However, this must be kept in perspective. It is by no means the worst thing that happened in the Troubles.

In the 70s Hitch vociferated for the cause of black nationalism in South Africa and Zimbabwe. He later remarked that Mugabe subsequently turned into everything that Mugabe’s enemies had accused him of being. So often Hitch summarised the situation so succinctly.

By the late 1970s he was well known on Fleet Street. Being a journalist was much better paid then than it is now.

On one occasion Hitch had his bottom publicly spanked with a rolled-up newspaper by Margaret Thatcher. She chided him as a ‘naughty boy’ and gave ‘a roll of the hip.’ Hitch could hardly believe it himself but had witnesses to the incident.

America

By 1980 Hitch said he was bored of London. Grub Street held little more allure for him. He had friends there such as James Fenton but for him the United States beckoned. In 1981 he packed his bags for Washington. He was to spend almost half his life in the United States.

Strangely for a socialist, America was the promised land. He saw it as the birthplace of revolution. As an anti-monarchist and an egalitarian, he saw it as the land of opportunity. Free speech and secularism appealed to him enormously. He was glad to get away from old grey England. It was jaded, staid, stale and grandmotherly.

Hitch had a green card. He wrote for numerous publications. He often penned pieces for the Atlantic and Vanity Fair. He became a friend of Michael Moore.

Christopher fulfilled some of the criteria for a stage Englishman. This Englishman abroad had a pukka accent, had attended Oxford, had a certain pomposity to him and could be charm itself when he wanted to. On the other hand, he always managed to look and sound as though he had only just rolled out of bed. His acerbic nature, hard left views, anti-monarchism and high functioning alcoholism were not among the stereotypes that Americans expected to see in an upper middle class Englishman.

Thomas Paine was an icon for Hitch. He later wrote a book on this man. Hitch desired to ‘live to some purpose’ as Paine had said of himself. In this Hitch succeeded many times over.

Over his 30 years in the United States, Hitch acquired some Americanisms. However, his accent scarcely attenuated.

In the USA, Hitch enjoyed a much higher salary than he had earned in the UK. He treated himself a lot. He was a literal champagne socialist.

In the USA, Hitch was aghast at Reaganism. The war on crime and the war on drugs were unparalleled acts of imprudence, folly, profligacy and injustice. Reagan’s immoral and illegal support for the most rapacious plutocrats in Central America filled Hitch with righteous wrath. Hitch was staggered that Reagan would assist narco-terrorists whilst denouncing drug use as inherently evil. Yet Reagan got away with it all.

Reagan invaded Grenada. The British Government did not warn the Grenadians despite Grenada being ruled by Elizabeth II. Hitch thought that this underscored the wickedness of US policy, the cravenness of the British and uselessness of the monarchy. Despite this flagrant act of illegal aggression, the US got away with it Scot free.

In Washington DC Hitch befriend Sidney Blumenthal. The journalist was an active Democrat. Years later they had a falling out when Hitch revealed remarks that Blumenthal had allegedly said in a private conversation. Blumenthal was by then working for President Clinton. The Clinton Administration had striven to besmirch the reputation of Monica Lewinsky with whom the president had had an extramarital sexual relationship. What Blumenthal had allegedly said in private totally contradicted his public pronouncements on la Lewinsky.

By the 1980s Hitch identified with Labour again. Many Trotskyites did which caused the party no end of ructions. He lamented that Mrs Thatcher was letting the United States use the UK as an aircraft carrier. It was as though George Orwell’s dystopian novel 1984 was coming true. The United Kingdom was no more than Air Strip One.

In 1982 Argentina invaded the Falklands. Leftists in the UK said that the Argentines were welcome to it. Britain should not engage in yet another colonial farce. Hitch was almost alone on the left in rejecting this analysis. He wanted the islands to be saved for democracy. He also believed that defeating Argentina would do that country a favour. The Military dictatorship would fall and freedom would be restored. His lonely voice on the left proved to be prophetic. By curious irony his father was one of the few Tories who was dead against the liberation of the Falklands.

Princess Diana was the secular saint of the 1980s. Hitch knew she was decent to AIDS victims. However, he still thought the monarchy was anachronistic and harmful. He wrote a book against it. He said the monarchy was Britain’s favourite fetish. He denounced it as reactionary and inegalitarian.

In the 1980s Hitch became increasingly cognizant of the growing menace of Islamism. Hitch disbelieved and disrespected all religions. However, he recognised that an antediluvian form of Islam was egregiously pernicious. He had seen the Middle East regress centuries in just a decade. That was because of Islamic fundamentalism funded by Saudi petrodollars. The retrograde and obscurantist Wahabi ideology was particularly puritanical and violently intolerant. This viciously anti-feminist, homophobic creed was disseminated throughout the Mohammedan world. Islamist states permitted slavery in all but formal designation.

Salman Rushdie was a dear friend of Hitch. In 1989 Rushdie published his satirical novel The Satanic Verses. This sendup of Islam did not play well in Dar al Islam. Rushdie is a British Indian. The Mumbai born author was raised a nominal Muslim. The publication of his novel was greeted wrathfully throughout the Muslim world.  There were protests in the United Kingdom. Mohammedans demanded that the book be prohibited for offending their faith. Disgracefully, some Labour MPs joined in this effort to end free expression.

Some Tories said that Rushdie was endangering lucrative contracts with Muslim countries. They were irked that a brown man should impair relations with the brown world. Some muttered that Rushdie was not really British and was only in the UK on sufferance.

Hitch sprang to the defence of his friend. Of course, Rushdie had the untrammelled right to publish whatsoever he pleased. There must be no compromise on free expression. This was one issue in which he was an absolutist.

In the late 1980s Hitch’s first marriage broke up. He married Carol Blue. They later had a daughter.

Hitch was incredibly well travelled.  He was in Moscow for a while where his brother later worked. He had been to everywhere from Argentina to Zimbabwe. He had been to Sri Lanka, Australia, Poland, and just about anywhere else you care to mention.

When the Romanian Revolution broke out Hitch was there to see it. He applauded the overthrow of Ceausescu.

Interventionism

The Iraqi annexation of Kuwait was greeted by most leftists with indifference. One Ishmaelite dictatorship swallows another. Iraq was at least secular. However, Hitchens was fully aware of the genocide that the Ba’athists in Iraq had perpetrated against the Kurds. The only way to stop this forever was to oust the Ba’athist tyrant Saddam Hussein. Hitch had no time for the absolute monarchy of Kuwait. He also reviled George Bush senior. Nonetheless, he threw his weight behind the mission to liberate Kuwait hoping this would then bring down Saddam. It was an unpopular position on the left. For many leftists, the USA could do no right.

Perhaps oddly for a leftist, Hitch jubilated the dissolution of the USSR. He considered it a perversion of the socialist idyll. He believed in multiparty democracy. He felt odium for autocracy. Further, he said that the end of the Cold War came as a blessed relief. The world was no longer living in the shadow of a mushroom could. Until that time the Third World War would have erupted at any time.

By the 1990s Hitch no longer believed as he once had done as a Marxist that global capitalism was about to collapse under the weight of its own contradictions. Despite being a socialist he founded economics tedious. He was an acquisitive capitalist in his way. He was certainly a champagne socialist. He did not stint in treating himself to the finer things in life. In that wise he was totally hypocritical. His compassion for the needy never extended to giving them a groat.

In 1992 Hitch took a grave dislike to William Jefferson Clinton and his wife Hillary ‘Rodham’ Clinton. It was a loathing that never left him. As C Hitchens elucidated, his detestation of this gruesome twosome was not political. He did not find their political opinions so objectionable. What got his goat was their insincerity and posturing. Here were two people who would do anything to grub for votes. When Clinton was Governor of Arkansas, he broke of his campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination to fly home to Little Rock so he could sign the death warrant of a mentally subnormal black man named Ricky Ray Rector. There was no need for Clinton to return to his state to do this. He could have signed the order and had it sent. But he wanted to maximise publicity for this act. Clinton reasoned that mercilessness would play well with the electorate. He would not allow himself to be outflanked on the right when it came to crime as Michael Dukakis has been in 1988. Rickie Ray Rector was executed despite having the mind of a toddler.

The suspicion that Bill Clinton was a rapist never left C Hitchens. His horror at the immorality of the Clintons lost Hitch friends on the left. People would ask Hitch whether he would prefer the notoriously dim-witted Dan Quayle as president?  Hitchens reprobated people who lowered themselves to using this forced choice as a reason to forgive the unrepentant Clinton for a plethora of transgressions.

Later on, Hitch skewered the Clintons with a book entitled Nobody left to life to: the triangulations of William Jefferson Clinton. He rejected as false the notion that because the Republicans were bad it was wrong to tell the truth about Clinton.

Hitch was not universally liked among the Washington press corps. Some journos in DC called him Christopher Snitchens. Furthermore, a piece on him was published entitled ‘Brit Twit.’ The other hacks disliked him sometimes out of envy. He was also one to rub some people up the wrong way. His manner was often self-important, moralising, stilted and even haughty.

Despite his fascination with the United States there was much about the land of the free that he despised. He thought the war on drugs was asinine and cruel. He abominated the religious right. Hitch remained a socialist but was less and less voluble on that issue as time went on.

In the mid-1990s Hitch visited the former Yugoslavia on assignment. He spoke up for the cause of the Bosniaks. He thought that religion was the root of the conflict. He set his face against Russia’s pro-Serb policy. Hitch believed that the West should intervene to save Sarajevo. This was a very unfashionable view at the time. He was irate that the US and UK refused to intervene fully.

It was over the Yugoslav issue that Hitch fell out with Noam Chomsky. Up until this point, he had applauded many of Chomsky’s musings. Chomsky was so eager to eviscerate the United States that he became a cheerleader for Serbs who ethnically cleansed other groups.

Though Hitch was glad that the USSR fell he was worried that the Orthodox Church was resuming its position of censor. He described it as sinister.

Anti-totalitarianism was key to Hitchens’ worldview. That was to define the rest of his life.

Christopher described himself as a nicotine addict. He was contumelious of the Republican presidential candidate Bob Dole for denying the irrefutable fact that smoking is bad for you.

In 1995 Hitch presented a documentary in which he took aim at someone to whom public opinion had accorded far too much exaltation. His target was Mother Theresa. He sought to de-canonise her before she had even died. As he remarked himself ‘who else would have the bad taste’ even to attempt such a task. His debunking of her saintly image was refreshing and confrontational like almost everything he did. He assumed the mantle of advocatus diabolus. When the Albanian nun died, and her correspondence was published it indicated that Hitch had been closer to the mark than anyone could have imagined. The woman herself had grave doubts about her faith. Moreover, she had encouraged Princess Diana to divorce despite this flying in the face of Catholic dogma. She preached a very different gospel to the lower orders.

The book about Mother Theresa was entitled The Missionary Position. He argued that her preachments increased suffering and poverty. Her unswerving opposition to contraception meant that countless millions were born into griding penury every year.

By the late 1990s Hitch was so widely recognised as a writer that he was offered a visiting professorship. This is richly ironic in view of his poor academic performance.

In the 1990s Hitch came across a sentence by the Irish politician and diplomat Dr Conor Cruise O’Brien. In it, the late Cruise O’Brien – a former Irish Labour Party politician – said that he was really a liberal and not a socialist because of the things he cherished most. That crystallised it for Hitch. He realised that he had become a liberal rather than a socialist.

When Hitch had been a socialist, despite his much-vaunted compassion for the needy he never gave them so much as an old English groat. It was far more important to put alcohol down his gullet. Even when he was a socialist, he sent his children to fee paying schools. Giving up privilege was for other people to do. He was a huge fan or Orwell and Hitch plainly believed that some animals were more equal than others.

One of Hitch’s pet hates was Henry Kissinger. As human rights legislation became more entrenched and tyrants found themselves on trial, Hitch longed for the day he would see Dr Kissinger in the dock. However, he regarded it as particularly improbable. As he could not legally arraign the former US Secretary of State he decided to do so in literary form. His book the Trial of Henry Kissinger sets out the mountain of irrefragable evidence that Kissinger broke US and international criminal law on a gargantuan scale.

By a curious irony one of the occasions on which Kissinger’s legendary diplomacy slipped was when he was photographed staring at Princess Diana’s decolletage at a dinner party. The princess was another target of Hitch.

Tony Blair was someone who Hitch praised to the moon. Blair had brought Labour back into government. Both were Europhiles. Blair reached the peak of his stock with Hitch when Blair liberated Iraq. The two later shared podia to debate religion. Hitch adulated Blair’s ‘panache’ in Blair’s ‘People’s Princess’ oration. It was odd that Hitch the soi-disant Trotskyist should embrace Blair who took the socialism out of the Labour Party.

In the 1990s Hitch sounded the alarm on the growing menace of Al Qa’eda. People preferred to believe they could ignore this problem and it would go away. Hitch called out Saudi Arabia for backing much Islamist terrorism. Much of the US establishment was in denial about what their supposed ally was doing.

The War on Terror

9/11 threw things into sharp relief. As Hitch said: on one said there was everything he loved and on the other was everything he hated. It was a straightforward battle between good and evil. Civilisation was lined up against barbarism. There could be no middle way.

The liberation of Afghanistan was fulsomely supported by Hitch. He travelled thither. It was uncomfortable for him to recognise that some of the Taliban had been Western allies in the 1980s. Nevertheless, he rejoiced in the death of Talibs.

Odium is much underrated as Hitch said. It can get you out of bed in the morning. His hatred of religious mania was his driving force.

The adage runs that you can take a man out of the far left but you cannot take the far left out of a man. Hitchens had abandoned Trotskyism’s objectives yet some it stayed with him attitudinally. He was still an iconoclast. He seemed to believe in the Trotskyist maxim: the worse the better. The more wars the better. He relished confrontation. His worldview was sometimes Manichean. He lauded America’s righteous war for democracy. He turned Nelson’s eye to America’s collusion with tyrannies from Saudi Arabia to Uzbekistan in its pursuit of the Taliban and Al Qa’eda.

American right wingers embraced Hitch with fervour. It was rare to have a progressive writer of such stature to advocate for the war on terror with such fervour.

The axis of evil – as identified by George W Bush – was also loathed by Hitch. The regimes of North Korea, Iraq and Iran were some of the worst in the world. Hitch thought it meet to emancipate the long-suffering peoples of these nations. He had visited all three of these countries. He lambasted North Korea for having Kim Il Sung as eternal president despite his death in 1994. Hitchens’ showed off his lexis but saying that that state was a thanatocracy or a mortocracy.

When it came to the Iraq War in 2003, Hitch was a perfervid vindicator of the liberation of Iraq. This was unfashionable on the left. Hitch’s reasons for wanting Iraq to be freed were simple: to end tyranny. He wanted to Kurds to be permanently free of the threat of genocide being completed. Their homeland in northern Iraq might not always be a safe haven. The US might one day tire of providing air cover. The Turks might invade. The only long-term solution was the ouster of the Ba’athists.

The weapons of mass destruction issue did not concern Hitch overmuch. Many consider it to have been a canard. Hitch went to Iraq and visited his Kurdish friends. In speaking up for their liberation Hitch lost many of his Western friends such as Michael Moore. Many leftists were aghast with Hitchens. How could an anti-imperialist support Western intervention in Mesopotamia.

Iraq did not turn into a perfect democracy. Much went wrong under the American occupiers. Hitchens blamed this on Ba’athists remnants, Al Qaeda and the Iranians.

The US waterboarded terrorist suspects. Hitch instantly condemned this and the abuses in Abu Ghraib Prison. This did not mean that he equivocated in the war on terror. He underwent waterboarding of his own freewill to see what it was like. He held to his view that the liberation of Iraq was amply justified and had produced a better Iraq with a pertinacity bordering on closed mindedness.

Hitch endorsed George W Bush in 2004. He said he was a single-issue voter: on civilisation. Despite his many disagreements with Bush junior, Hitch said that the president was right on the central thing. That was that Al Qa’eda must be annihilated.

One of the most moving pieces that Hitch penned was meeting the family of a young American who had joined the US Army because he was inspired by Hitch’s opinion pieces on Iraq. This young man was deployed to Iraq and killed in action. Hitch’s work meant so much to the deceased that the dead soldier’s family invited the writer to be with them when the scattered the ashes of their beloved son. He was in unenviable the position that W B Yeats once composed a poem about: did his writing send a man out to fight and out meet his doom?

After over a quarter of a century in the United States, Hitch became an American citizen. He was sworn in on his birthday by the head of Homeland Security. He had always been enthralled by the US. Its idylls of equality, free expression and diversity appealed to him enormously. Yet he noted that the United States so often failed to live up to its admirable founding principles. Hitch later wrote a piece about himself entitled ‘All American.’

Christopher Hitchens had a compendious knowledge of English literature and of the history of the anglosphere. He also read up on the literature of Mediterranean Antiquity in translation. He cited Lucretius as an early atheist. He noted even the Bible states that there were freethinkers in ancient Israel. A psalm reads: the fool says in his heart there is no god.

As in the Iraq controversy, Hitch was spoiling for another fight. As he entitled one of his books he was always: Looking for trouble. He toured the United States in the company of a Christian fundamentalist pastor. Despite the gulf between them the two men formed a rapport. Thought he loathed religion he was canny enough to respect his disputants and wily and often formidable debaters. Their acuity and assiduity when it came to rhetorical sleight of hand was not to be underestimated. Their worldview had an emotional purchase on the faithful that trumped cold reason. They offered hope and he offered butc the cold and silent grave.

When it came to 2008, Hitch expressed his relief and elation that Hillary Clinton did not secure the Democratic nomination. He read Obama’s memoirs assiduously. The clarity and sincerity of Obama’s writing won Hitchens over though there was one admission of skulduggery on Obama’s behalf. Barak Obama opined that if you are going to get into politics in Chicago you need to go to a church. Relieved that Obama’s religiosity was solely a show for electoral purposes, Hitchens endorsed him. He railed against John McCain as senile.

The God Delusion was published by Professor Dawkins. Hitch was a confidante of Dawkins. Dawkins’ angle was mainly educational. He had had the chair in the public understanding of science. Christopher saw that there was money and publicity to be had from an all-out attack on faith. Therefore, he sharpened his pencil.

In 2008 Hitch published God is not great.  He built on a brave and noble tradition dating back to at least Lucretius. This broadside all faiths was an enthralling book written in his characteristic lucid and lively prose. His book was effectively pro hereseus and was a bestseller.It was acclaimed by his friends Professor Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris and Stephen Fry.

Atheist did not describe Hitch. He was an anti-theist. He said it would be woeful if gods did exist. He called the notion that we were under divine superintendence ‘a spiritual North Korea.’

Although the Roman Pontiff was one of Hitch’s main targets Hitch liked to pontificate himself. Some found him increasingly arrogant and boorish. He could be condescending.

By that time Hitch was a regular on US chat shows. His thought provoking and aggressive style made him a fabulous guest. He took no prisoners. He refused to accord respect to charlatans like Reverend Jerry Falwell. The rest of America seemed to conform to what was for many a false grief for one of the most loathsome specimens in the public sphere. When Falwell died, Hitchens denounced the pastor as ‘a Chaucerian fraud’ and described the man’s ‘carcass’ being found on the bathroom floor. Hitch gave a broadside to Falwell’s memory. He rightly noted that Falwell has become a multimillionaire through preaching hatred towards other races and faiths as well as by befooling his naïve and semi-literate acolytes into handing him their hard-earned lucre. Falwell’s mostly working class stock were duped into giving him their salaries whilst he lived in opulence. It was all part of the prosperity gospel. It was a sick inversion of the message of Jesus.

When it came to debates with people of faith, Hitch did not suffer fools gladly. Religious bigotry was greeted with a fusillade from Hitchens. He came across as a conceited and confessed to vanity though not of a physical kind.

Groupies increasingly surrounded Hitchens. Perhaps this adoration went to his head. He became snootier.

Hitch’s support for the liberation of Iraq had won him admirers in the Republican Party. As Salman Rushdie said, Hitch’s anti-religious crusade (irony intended) saved him from the American right.

Salman Rushdie was awarded a knighthood by Her Majesty the Queen. Salman accepted the gong. Hitch forgave Sir Salman for accepting the knighthood. Usually Hitch despised people for accepting such honours because he hated the British system of honours. The knighthood was one in the eye for Islamism. On that ground, Hitch welcomed this recognition of his friend’s literary achievements.

In debate Hitch was a modern Quintilian. Hitch was often asked to debate on television. He debated against the British far left anti-Zionist George Galloway. Hitch dubbed Galloway ‘a publicist for the Ba’ath party.’ Galloway’s ad personam was about Hitch’s drinking. Christopher H also debated against a man whom he exalted: Tony Blair. Christopher even debated against his own brother Peter Hitchens. Peter produced a refutation of God is not great entitled The rage against God.

Hitch would slaughter and pillage his way through a debate. When someone complained that he or she was offended he would say that this was surplusage.

Despite continuing to despise Hillary Clinton, Hitch recognised that she might one day be the lesser of two evils. He said the time might come when he even he would cast his ballot in her favour.

Towards death

In June 2010 Hitch had to tell his audience in his own words: non sum quam eram. He had been diagnosed with cancer of the throat. Decades of tobacco consumption had caused this. He then came out with the world’s most understated anti-smoking warning: smoking might not be advisable.

The cancer advanced to stage 4 with grim rapidity. There is no stage 5. Hitch decided to meet his fate with his typical stoicism.

In his inimitable and novel style Hitch said he would ‘do death’ actively. He went on striving for the causes to which he was committed to the very end. In equanimous and pensive mood he reflected that as a father his final duty was to get out of the way. He was the master of the metaphor saying death was like being told that the party is over or even worse: the party is still going on but you have to leave.

Hitch had every treatment there was. But soon it was apparent that his fight against cancer was the losing battle. He noted that some of his Christian nemeses gloated that it was the organ that had blasphemed so much – the throat – that had been stricken. On the other hand, he observed that some Christians held a day of prayer asking that he be healed.

The guru of the enlightenment went on a speaking tour even in his last few weeks. He took to the podium whilst his strength held.

Mortality is Hitch’s book on meeting death. He said death is nothing to be afraid of. His stoicism and equanimity as he looked eternity in the eye was awe striking. His cognizance that his dissolution was imminent did nothing to diminish his contumely or asperity towards the parties of god. One of his essays on death is entitled Nothing to be afraid of.

As his strength waned Hitch’s friends in London organised a farewell ceremony to him.  It was an Intelligence Squared event. Thousands gathered to hear Stephen Fry, Richard Dawkins, Sean Penn, Christopher Buckley, Salman Rushdie and others pay tribute to Hitch’s magnificent and peerless contribution to the battle for free expression. Hitch joined by video link from the United States.

Christians often like to boast that the doughtiest atheists convert on their deathbeds. Hitch assured people that he would do no such thing and any such tale would be a vile slur on his good name. He was cogent almost to the very end. He faced his dissolution with philosophic detachment.

As Hitch lay dying, he lamented that he could not valorously lay down his life in a noble cause. His friends and family gathered to reminisce with him. But he also looked forward. He eschewed melancholy and self-pity.

In December 2011 Hitch was in a hospital in Texas. Cancer finally got the better of him. Bizarrely, his last words were, ‘’capitalism, downfall.’’ His boon companion, Salman Rushdie, tweeted with admirable pith, ‘’A great voice has fallen silent.’’

Legacy

No obsequy was held. Therefore, there could be no proper valediction for him. I feel it was wrong of him to deprive his countless fans of a chance to reach closure.

It was a pity that Christopher did not live two days longer to hear that one of the people he reviled most had died. That was the North Korean tyrant Kim Jong Il.

Christopher Hitchens is a flawed hero. I certainly do not concur with his views on all issues. But the man had manifold virtues and virtuosities. Hitch’s oeuvre has clarity and pace. It is never banal nor are his phrases ever trite. His stentorian timbre roared forth his views with admirable eclat. He shall be remembered as an orator and a polemicist.

I heartily recommend so many of his tomes. Why Orwell Matters is one of them.

I wish to read the complete works of Hitchens. His name shall be known for centuries.

As we are under sustained assault from the forces of irrationality and deceit, we need a Hitch now more than ever.

 

Just over two centuries ago John Keats was summoned to the eternal auditorium in the sky. Though he died at the age of only 25 he is among the most jubilated poets of all time. He was and is the superlative syllable stringer. John Keats was blessed with the most inappreciable literary gifts. What is it about Keats’ oeuvre that accounts for the remarkable durability of his verses? I was introduced to his astounding oeuvre as a schoolboy. My admiration and adulation for this spectacular poet has never left me. His mind teemed like a river full of migrating salmon.

For my money, Keats is the poet who symbolises the romantic movement better than any other. He died younger than the others and his all too brief life was touched by grief again and again. Though his life was maudlin, yet he never despaired. He sought solace and pleasance in even the most mundane things. John Keats had an uncanny knack of turning the unremarkable into something splendiferous. His sublime intellect has thrilled millions down the centuries. His refined sentimentality made for a teeming imagination and enabled him to compose some of the most exquisite and artful poems in any language. He composed panegyrics to nature that have seldom been equalled. That is why his name is illumined in eternal glory.

By the age of 20 John Keats’s had seen both his parents die, his younger brother die and John himself was terminally ill. It may appear to be a life swathed in deepest sable. Despite the many bitter blows from fate, John was ever upbeat and resilient. His consciousness of his mortality made him ever more productive.

Keats’ verse is a palimpsest of classical education overlaid with the tropes of the Romantic Movement. An almost childlike sincerity shines through his masterful verses. The lucidity and originality of his work has few peers. Read his poems and you shall find yourself possessed by the ‘blithe spirit’ that his limned. Dip into his verses and you shall ‘breathe serene’ as he put it.

John Keats was born at London in 1795. The family at first lived in a house near where the Barbican Tube Station now stands. The house is no longer extant. John was to spend all but the last 6 months of his life in London. His father ran a livery stables and inn. John was one of four surviving children. John’s brief life was tinged by grief again and again. When John was small his father perished from falling from his steed. The family was middle class but in straitened circumstances. An education was knocked into him. He was quick at his books and soon had the better of Latin and Ancient Greek accidence. The classics fructified in his ever-fertile mind. John drunk deep the inspiration of Ancient Mediterranean cultures. John’s schoolmasters were agog at their pupil’s uncommon gifts. Back then pupils were taught the art of scansion. He honed the craft of word weaving.

By his mid-teens Keats was composing sublime and elegant poesy. Few pieces of his juvenilia have survived. As an adolescent he was afflicted by more and deeper anxieties than usual. The familial financial situation was perennially insecure. His mother rewed but her second marriage was cataclysmic. Within weeks she and John’s stepfather separated though they never divorced. Divorced as a very lengthy, expensive and ignominious process back then for both the sinned against as well as the sinning.

When John was only 14 his mother died. He was left to care for his younger sister and two younger brothers. Despite his bereavements he did not dwell on tristful themes. His poesy is replete with vitality and buoyancy.

Another disadvantage that beset young John was that he was also decidedly lacking in stature. In an age when most men were 5’6’’ or so he was 5’2’’. He felt his smallness made most girls unapproachable. His fiscal challenges did not add to his allure as a suitor.

In his late teens Keats was apprenticed to an apothecary (pharmacist) after a few years he qualified in that profession. He considered upgrading his qualifications to become a physician. This would have assured him a handsome income. In the end he decided against it. His true talent lay in composing verses. He wanted to throw all his time and endeavour into his first love: poesy. That was to be his vocation. Little did he know how limited his time was to be.

At the age of 18 a volume entitled ‘Poems by John Keats’ was published. It sold a respectable few hundred copies. That was very creditable for a first publication especially as he had no connections. For a literary debut it is sans pareil. The literary genius was on his way to achieving immortality.

Around this age John was smitten by his neighbour, Fanny Brawne. But her family disapproved of him. He was not affluent, and they thought he had few prospects. They did not want their daughter marrying beneath her.

As a member of the Romantic movement, Keats rejoiced in the most ordinary ordinary things: in plants, in trees, valleys, the wind and wine. Others would pass these things by without a second glance. Keats took more than solace from the natural world and unremarkable occurrences. He gleaned gladness and inspiration from the seemingly quotidian. Though his life was grief-laden and lovelorn he did not dwell on heartrending themes. His work is astonishingly free of plaintive verses. The epistolary evidence of John Keats’ is of a vivacious and buoyant character. He was no tragedian.

The world was in turmoil as Keats rose to manhood. The Napoleonic Wars were fought all across Europe and back again. France clubbed small nations insensible. From New Orleans to Nepal, the British were fighting. The Royal Navy battled the French upon the seas and oceans. Battles, sieges, spoliations and revolutions raged. In the British Isles there was radicalism in the air. Some preached revolution. The reaction was hellbent on crushing the life out of radicals. Some were vindicators of abolition of servitude. Britain was ruled by a lunatic monarch and his comically corpulent son. All this seems to have passed Keats’ by. When it came to politics he glazed over. He reacted to the upheaval with complete indifference.

By the age of 20 Keats was making waves in literary London. He moved in the same circles as Lord Byron, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Robert Southey and Leigh Hunt. He even more William Wordsworth once though Wordsworth was a generation older than him. Wordsworth was impressed with Keats’s work. Wordsworth was a trailblazer for the romantic movement in the British Isles. He was almost a father figure for the junior members of the movement. But he was an 18^th century father: distant and cold.

Though John Keats knew these other romantic poets, he was not as wealthy as them. He was not afflicted with the same guilt that they were. He was also indifferent to their political opinions.

Greece was Keats muse. Alas and alack, he never visited Hellas. The Napoleonic Wars and his chronic impecuniosity precluded a trip the cradle of European civilisation.

In 1818 Keats had his annus mirabilis. This fruitful year built his reputation. What spurred him to be so productive? It might have been his increasing cognizance of mortality. That year his brother died of tuberculosis at the age of 19. It was a shot across Keats’ bows. John himself coughed up dark blood that year. With his education in materia medica he wrote that he knew it to be arterial blood. His days were numbered. Knowing a cold and silent grave was not far off he set to the task of offering something to posterity. From that moment on his feathered quill was seldom still.

Residing by Hampstead Heath, John composed five of his six odes. The house was owned by an Old Etonian barrister named Richard Woodhouse. Woodhouse was in bewildered awe of Keats’ unequalled verses.

Some of Keats’ work is about classical themes. Endymion is a reworking of an Ancient Greek work about a shepherd who has had a spell cast on him causing him to sleep for centuries. ‘A thing of beauty is a joy forever/ It will never pass away into nothingness…’ is it overture.

Some of Keats’s verse delight in simplicity. For instance, Faery song is a charmingly spare, lyrical and almost infantile ditty:

Shed no tear. Oh shed no tear!/ The flower will bloom another year/ Overheard/ Look overhead!/ Amongst the flowers/ White and red./ Weep no more/ Oh weep no more/ The young bud sleeps in the root’s white core/ Dry your eyes/ Oh dry your eyes!/ For  I was taught in paradise/ to ease the breast of melodies.

The poem goes on to be a valediction. Perhaps it was prospective of his own impending demise. ‘Adieu, adieu/ I fly adieu/ I vanish in the heaven’s blue/ Adieu. Adieu.’

The verses that Keats wrote are unfailingly blithe, charming and splendiferous. He was ever mindful, as poets seemed not to be, that the chief distinction between poesy and prose is that the former is made to be declaimed.

Keats composed some magnificent and challenging pieces. His reputation is built largely on his resplendent odes. Many consider ‘Ode on a Grecian urn’ to be his masterwork. He addresses this praise poem to an ancient artefact and lauds it as being more expressive of past glories than anything a poet could write:

Thou still unravish’d bride of quietness,

       Thou foster-child of silence and slow time,

Sylvan historian, who canst thus express

       A flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme:

What leaf-fring’d legend haunts about thy shape

       Of deities or mortals, or of both,

               In Tempe or the dales of Arcady?

Think of these lines being whispered by a mortally ill 23 year old, and you will catch their cadences.

Bear in mind that Keats was writing in an epoch when ’ye’, ‘thee’ and ‘thou’ were still in common usage. His verses were flawlessly constructed in terms of meter and rhyme scheme. Yet there was never any strained wording.

For my money ‘Ode to a Nightingale’ is his most stupendous accomplishment: In the first stanza he writes;

…light-wingèd Dryad of the trees,
In some melodious plot
Of beechen green, and shadows numberless,
Singest of summer in full-throated ease.       

The reversal of the adjective noun order gets the attention of readers though this was not unusual at the time. He accented the ‘e’ of winged for the sake of meter. A dryad is a living spirt of the trees in Ancient Greek theogony.

The second verse of the poem is surely the most splendidly evocative description of wine of all time:

O for a draught of vintage! that hath been
Cool’d a long age in the deep-delvèd earth,
Tasting of Flora and the country-green,
Dance, and Provençal song, and sunburnt mirth!
O for a beaker full of the warm South!
Full of the true, the blushful Hippocrene,
With beaded bubbles winking at the brim,
And purple-stainèd mouth;
That I might drink, and leave the world unseen,
And with thee fade away into the forest dim:

Though the work is packed with classical allusions he bears his erudition lightly. These were widely recognised at the time. In fact, his references to mythology were relatively few and not abstruse for the era. He succeeded in putting into verse the seemingly inexpressible mental sensation of imbibing alcohol.

It was an inestimable privilege for me to stand under a tree outside the house in Hampstead where he wrote this poem. The tree that stands now is probably a descendant of the original.

John Keats was capable of composing a poem on a well-worn theme without ever being trite. He avoided the weary cliché. His use of imagery was extraordinarily inventive. His poesy had verve and bounciness.

In Ode to a Nightingale, Keats wrote ‘tender is the night.’ This gave F Scott FitzGerald the title of his novel.

Later in Ode to a Nightingale, Keats writes of how it is not worth living to a sorrowful and troubled old age:

the weariness, the fever, and the fret
Here, where men sit and hear each other groan;
Where palsy shakes a few, sad, last grey hairs,
Where youth grows pale, and spectre-thin, and dies;
Where but to think is to be full of sorrow
And leaden-eyed despairs;

He composed this in May 1819. He was 23 and already had tuberculosis. He was growing ever more conscious of his impending demise. That is why it was worth persuading himself that living long was not to be sought after. As he sputtered up blood, he was redoubled in his conviction that he would not become a doctor. He must through all his passion and his little remaining life into his poetical works. It would take another three years to become a doctor. As we now know he had only two years left to live. The fatally stricken poet wisely chose not to squander his remaining years studying for a profession that he could not live to join.

Towards the end of ‘Ode to a Nightingale’ he wrote ‘adieu, adieu!’ He was preparing to take leave of this mortal coil.

In his ‘Ode to sleep’ Keats encapsulates the wonderment of slumber in lines which must be susurrated; ‘Oh soft embalmer of the midnight still!’

There is a freshness and a vitality to Keats’ work that is seldom surpassed. Though he addressed some well-worn themes he did so with exceptional insight and was never hackneyed.

The poesy of John Keats did not meet universal approbation.  The Irish Tory MP John Wilson Croker reviewed Keats poems in the Quarterly Review. Croker panned Keats’ work as jejune. He scorned the young poet as half-educated. Keats was contemptuously said to be part of the Cockney School: a circle of poets who had not attended Varsity. John Wilson Croker later coined the term ‘the Conservative Party’.

John Keats composed some light-hearted verses. Perhaps his most unserious is a playful poem entitled ‘A song about myself’,

There was a naughty boy,
A naughty boy was he,
He would not stop at home,
He could not quiet be-
He took
In his knapsack
A book
Full of vowels
And a shirt …

So he followed his nose

To the north

To the north

He followed his nose

To the north…

The cheeky little poem showed he was capable of writing playful pieces for children. Plain though this poem is there is a certain sparkle to it. He never married and had no children. Therefore, it was the wains of others who were reared on a wholesome diet of Keats.

Keats composed many more awestriking lines. They are too numerous to cite then all here. I can offer but a small sample of his splendid work. He was incapable of mediocrity. He addressed himself to common themes but always found an original angle. John studied famous poets closely but did not imitate them. He had found his own voice as a schoolboy.

The poems of Keats are fabulously evocative. His use of imagery and other literary devices is unequalled. The lines’ enjambment succeeds so splendidly. The themes are gorgeously enmeshed. You may find your mind aswim with wonderment at his ineffable and peerless brilliancy. The work is magnificently memorable and the marvellous musicality is enchanting. His euphonious and felicitous verses are a rare delight. Keats cared deeply not just for the signification of his words but for their sound. Read his work and you shall be entranced and spellbound by his heavenly poems. Dull would he be of soul who could read his poesy and not find himself carried on ‘the viewless wings of poesy’ as Keats himself put it. A freshness and an audacity pervades his poems. His lines shall fill you with an unexampled rapture. The heavenly lyricism and unimprovable diction of his verse’s accounts for his exceptional popularity.

The complete works of John Keats consists of a couple of hundred poems. By the standards of the day none of his poems were unusually long. Endymion is but a couple of thousand lines, but many poets composed poems of several thousand lines back then. He did not write prose. However, there are many letters by him that are extant. This epistolary evidence is the basis for biographies of the stricken young writer.

As his medical condition disimproved he decided to take ship to Italy. There was no hope of beating consumption. However, in a more clement climate his life might at least be extended, with luck, for a couple of years. In September 1820 Keats took ship for the Mediterranean. It was his only ever trip out of England. As the ship rolled and pitched upon the foaming deep it was torment for John in his condition. He wrote, ‘Now more than ever seems it rich to die/ To cease upon a midnight without pain.’ Accompanied by a doctor friend he landed in Italy a few weeks later.

There they travelled overland to Rome. Because of Keats increasing frailty they had to travel gingerly. Why did he choose to go to the Eternal City? Further south the warmer and even drier climate would have agreed more with his far from robust constitution. Perhaps John elected to go to Rome as he had spent his childhood days reading Latin and learning of the city’s former glories.

At school John had learnt a little Italian. He probably never thought he would have a chance to use it. It was taught as a literary not a conversational language. To his chagrin he was so frail that he could scarcely leave the house. His last few letters are scarcely lachrymose. His fortitude in the face of death unmanned even his doctor friend. Only in the final hours did Keats’ mood grow tenebrous.

Not being a religious man, John did not have the consolations of faith. He does not seem to have believed that he was going to an afterlife. He fantasised in a last letter, ‘I think I shall be remembered among the English poets after my death.’ However, he gave strict instructions on what to inscribe on his headstone. His name was not to appear. Was his modesty or even self-effacement? His gravestone reads:

 ‘This grave /contains /all that was mortal of a /young English poet /who on his deathbed/ in the bitterness of his heart/ at the maliciousness of his enemies /desired these words to be engraven on his tombstone:/ ‘’Here lies one whose name was writ in water.’’/ 24 February 1821.

The headstone was to be adorned with the image of lyre. That is because in Greece poems were declaimed to the accompaniment of a lyre. Keats’ works were lyrical.

The mention of Keats’ foes reminds us how he triumphed over them a thousand-fold. Who now remembers the name of any of his enemies?

John and his friend took a house by the Spanish Steps. His condition worsened drastically. Sooner than anyone had foreseen the angel of death hovered over him. John Keats faced his doom with rare stoicism. Such was his agony that he welcomed death as a blissful deliverance. His last utterance was ‘Thank God it has come!’

On 24 February 1821 John Keats drew his last breath. His death mask was made. This is now in the possession of Eton College. A small funeral cortege bore his body to Il Cimiterio Acattolica just inside the southern walls of Rome. There he has lain ever since. He is endowed with eternal youth. Think of his surpassing verses as literary elixir.

News travelled slowly in those days. It took a few weeks before Shelley, who was also in Italy, was informed of his friend’s death. P B Shelley found it a very bitter blow. Shelley mourned his friend by composing the most stupendous elegy of all time: Adonais. It opens ‘I weep for Adonais; he is dead.’ He was calling his friend an Adonis but for the sake of scansion added a vowel.

By the time of John Keats’ death his poems had sold but 200 copies. He is now one of the most widely read poets in any language. A stave of Keats is just the tonic you need when in a melancholy mood.

When Oscar Wilde was in self-imposed exile after his release from Reading Gaol he journeyed to La Citta Eterna. There he visited Keats’ final resting place. He was moved to compose a poem at the grave of a fellow literary martyr.

John Keats’ speaks to every succeeding generation. His message of the joy of the natural world is universal. His vivacity and mind-boggling verbal intelligence shall always be appreciated. Though he was diminutive he is a colossus.

I planned to visit his grave again this year on the bicentenary of his death. Beneath my feet there would have been a richer dust concealed. I wished to declaim his verses to him. As though he could reach out to me from centuries ago and commune with me. His short and magnific life was tragically short. He accomplished more in his lease of years than a million men do in an ordinary lifespan.

John Keats has achieved literary apotheosis. His place in literature is assured. The glee he has brought to untold millions of many generations has won him a seat on Mount Olympus.

Progress – define it objectively. Why do people dislike progress?

Progress is a positive change. If it is objective it is about things getting better in a way that is provable and therefore no reasonable person can disagree. This would include things such as extending life expectancy, persuading more people to give up smoking, reducing global warming, closing the hole in the Ozone layer, reducing the murder rate, reducing the suicide rate or lifting people out of absolute poverty. These changes would be progress because they are aimed at preserving life. It is human instinct to remain alive which is why we eat and drink. Those who try to end their lives are usually judged to be mentally ill.

There can be progress which is not necessarily a moral improvement. Someone who attains better scores in exams than before is making progress. Someone who achieves faster times in running is making progress. This can be demonstrated objectively because there is a metric to do this.

We could make people live longer and this could be proved through data. However, it is debatable whether this is a desirable aim. The pension system might collapse. Is it worth living many years bed bound or in a permanent vegetative state? The health service would then have to expend so many of its resources extending the lives of geriatrics. Therefore, the younger generations’ health would be neglected.

Economic progress is about enriching ourselves. This can be proven through looking at Gross Domestic Product. GDP is sometimes misleading as it might hide a huge gulf between the affluent and the indigent. The United States has a very high GDP but that is because it has many billionaires even though 20% of the people are in poverty. Economic progress is not always to be welcomed even when it means greater wealth even for the poorest. Car ownership has become the norm in highly developed countries. But this brought with it more pollution, more noise and more traffic jams. It became difficult to find a parking space. Furthermore, green space had to be concreted over to build more roads and car parks. Some see all this so-called progress as a pity. Some economic progress could be undesirable. If we concentrated on providing for the needs of the poorest this would increase the sum of human happiness more so than furnishing the already affluent with superfluous material goods.

Economic progress can lead to urban sprawl. It might also cause small family owned businesses to go bust. The tranquility of a close knit community can be wrecked by a behemoth business. For instance, a hypermarket out of town can undercut a corner shop because the small business cannot compete on prices with a hypermarket that buys goods in bulk. Mass scale tourism has ruined the quaintness and placidity of remote fishing villages for instance. The people in the village would become wealthier due to the influx of tourists. But is that worth it? That is a subjective issue. Poverty, not just development, is also ugly.

Objectively demonstrable progress is something which a datum can prove as adumbrated hereinbefore. This is in stark contrast to something subjective which is a matter of personal preference or ideology. The victory of a certain political party is hailed as progress by some but seen as retrograde by others. Social changes will be lauded as emancipation by some but disparaged as decadence by others. Gender and racial equality can be shown through statistics. However, some bigots dislike these trends. Therefore such contentious changes which do not have a statistical basis or an uncontentious reason for calling them progress can be objectively identified as progress.

Progress involves change. Some people dislike change. Those who are small ‘c’ conservatives tend to be sceptical about change. There are reactionaries who are opposed to all modernisation and indeed wish to turn the clock back to the way that things used to be centuries ago. Progress is threatening to people who are set in their ways. Those of a very traditional cast of mind wish to continue current practices. This can be irrational: being overlay attached to doing things the way they have always been done just for the sake of it. Not all traditions are worthy of automatic respect.

Technological progress can put people out of work. Some people are Luddites and are against scientific and technological progress. People have opposed vaccines from the time of the smallpox vaccine in the 1780s. To this day we have people who disbelieve in vaccines including for COVID-19. There are people who think it is playing God or interfering with nature. Such irrationality has still not disappeared despite people being more educated and less superstitious than they were in the 18th century.

Some people were against trains and cars. New fangled items upset people of a very backward looking mindset. Those who are made unemployed by new technology have a logical reason to oppose it. Within 20 years we will probably have no bus drivers, taxi drivers, lorry drivers, aeroplane pilots, helicopter pilots or ship pilots. All the people who currently do these jobs will need to be found jobs.

Technological changes that save labour are progress. We can prove this because less human effort is required and people can do things they enjoy rather than work that they do not always enjoy. Furthermore, to stick with the example of self-driving vehicles, it is human error that causes crashes almost every time. Automatic cars and other vehicles do not become intoxicated, they do not lose their tempers, they do not fall asleep at the wheel and they cannot break the speed limit. They are very efficient. Therefore self-driving vehicles and self-flying planes will keep us safer.

There are some irrational suspicions of new technology. Some people simply have a knee jerk reaction against innovation. Elderly people often find it hard to adapt to new technology and modes of thought.

In conclusion, progress is generally to be welcomed. It can be objectively demonstrated through data which will show an improvement that any right thinking person would celebrate. There will be some downsides to these changes and those impacted as well as ultra-conservative people will dislike these changes.

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There is more to healing than the application of scientific knowledge

Write a unified essay in which you address the following:

Briefly define ‘scientific knowledge’. Explain how it might be argued that medical treatment that is not wholly based on scientific knowledge is worthless. Discuss whether there can be approaches to healing that are valid but not amenable to scientific experiment. 

Healing is recovering after an illness or injury. Scientific knowledge is knowledge about the natural world and human inventions. This includes biology, chemistry and physics. Such knowledge is garnered through observation and experiments to test hypotheses. An experiment needs to be a fair test and to be repeated on many occasions to guard against the possibility of a rogue result. Scientists must be circumspect about leaping to conclusions. Scientific findings are published in peer reviewed scholarly journals. Scientific knowledge needs to be certain or near certain before we call it knowledge at all. However, no science is immutable. It has been overturned before and could be again. For instance, people thought that they knew that the world was the centre of the universe but from the 16th century onwards it became accepted that the universe is heliocentric.

Some argue that medical treatment need not be exclusively based on scientific knowledge. There are people like Prince Charles who say that homeopathic medicine is equally valid. Likewise some favour traditional Chinese medicine or ayurvedic medicine. However, these so-called schools of medicine are not regarded by the medical profession as real medicine. Medicine involves developing drugs through several years of double blind tests with full data sets published. Medicine has to be sure that positive outcomes for patients are not simply consequent upon coincidence or extraneous factors. That is why in a drug experiment there is a control group which is given a placebo.

The Prince of Wales was an advocate for making homeopathy available on the National Health Service. However, the medical profession generally reacted negatively saying this was a footling waste of time and would be a diversion of scarce funds and resources.

It is said that ayurvedic medicine, traditional Chinese medicine are contumeliously dismissed by Western medicine for Eurocentric reasons. Some Westerners find it hard to accept that Asia was centuries ahead of Europe in terms of medicine.

Faith can help people live longer and recover faster. Religious people often attribute this to divine intervention. However, this is probably because religious people believe that they will live longer. This can make them actually do so because their morale is high and they are more socially engaged by membership of a religious community and they therefore tend to be physically active as much as they walk to their place of worship. Religion is not open to experiment. It is a matter of faith not science. If a religion could be proved to be true on a scientific level then it would not require any faith to believe in it any more than we need faith to believe in gravity or photosynthesis. Religion and science are said to be non-overlapping magisteria by religious apologists.

People cite having friends and a loving family as being positively correlated with making a swift and full recovery from illnesses and after operations. But this could be said to have a scientific basis in that people with a loving family and many friends have higher morale and are hugged. Data proves that this stimulates endorphins and boosts the immune system thereby speeding up the healing process. They say that laughter is the best medicine: again this is because it stimulates the immune system.

Non-scientific approaches to medicine are ridiculed by many physicians as nonsensical. These non-scientific approaches are seen as at best a waste of time and money but at worst a dangerous delusion. Some patients might go to a so-called homeopathic doctor rather than a real doctor. If homeopathy, ayurvedic medicine and traditional Chinese medicine could prove that they work to a scientific level then they would be accepted as part of real medicine by the scientific community. They are not amenable to experiment.

It is true that ayurvedic medicine and homeopathic medicine sometimes seem to work. But that could just be good luck. Perhaps the patient was going to get better anyway and the ayurvedic medicine or homeopathy made no difference. Alternatively, it could be a case of mind over matter. If the patient believes that the homeopathy or ayurvedic medicine would heal him or her then it does so because it is a case of mind over matter. Much of recovery is dependent on morale. That is also why many elderly people die in January since they have willed themselves to live past New Year.

In conclusion, it is true that healing can be assisted by things that are not based on scientific knowledge. However, this is applicable only in a minority of cases and is seldom determinative in itself. Medicine should not become distracted by non-scientific doctrines and practices.

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People are often motivated to deny the existence of problems if they disagree with the solutions to those problems.

Explain what you think is meant by the statement. Present a counter-argument. To what extent do you agree with the statement?

The statement suggests that people sometimes fail to face up to problems if the solution to the problem is deeply unattractive. There are numerous examples. For instance it is scientifically proven that climate change is happening and that it is at least partially anthropogenic and is harming us. The solution involves changes to our lifestyles that many find unpalatable. For example, we will have to drive fewer cars, drive smaller cars, drive electric cars, fly less frequently, insulate our houses more, live in smaller houses and wear more clothes at home in the winter. This involves reducing our quality of life and making some consumer products less affordable. It also means we will have less convenience. All this is very unattractive to some people. It will also hit the profitability of powerful vested interests such as airlines, the automotive industry and hydrocarbon companies. Therefore they are minded to de-emphasise or even deny the anthropogenic aspect of climate change, to downplay the injurious effects of climate change or even to claim that climate change is not occurring at all.

People tend to tell themselves something they can tolerate. They say that the truth always hurts. It does not always hurt but sometimes it does.

An obese person might refuse to recognise that he is obese. A drastic diet and an exercise regime might be unbearable for this person. Therefore, he is wont to be in denial about his medical condition.

When a doctor tells a patient that she has been diagnosed with a serious or even terminal illness the patient sometimes refuses to accept it at first. This is indicative or a person being unwilling to confront the hideous and frightening truth.

People who are addicts often refuse to recognise their condition for what it is and seek help. Acknowledging the condition is the first step on the road to recovery. An addict usually does not wish to admit that he or she has an addiction because the word addict is opprobrious but also because the concomitant consequences of addiction are harmful and sometimes even fatal. This is applicable to drug abuse, alcoholism and nicotine addiction. Beating addiction often requires rehabilitation, changing habits, breaking destructive relationship cycles, moving to a new place, getting a new job plus the anguish and physical pain of withdrawal symptoms. This can involve delirium tremens. As the way to beat addiction is hard the addict would prefer not to face the truth. Addicts tend to be prisoners of the present: they cannot think in long time scales.

Even when people acknowledge a problem and admit that the only solution is going to hurt they usually delay moving to that solution. We delay the unattractive. This is true of fiscal matters now.

A counterargument is that people commonly invent non-existent problems. They will demand expensive, painful and onerous solutions to these imaginary problems. Munchausen’s Syndrome is an example wherein a patient presents himself or herself to a doctor claiming to be afflicted with certain ailments. He or she might describe all the symptoms and even have faked some of them. This person can be very convincing and persistent but scans and blood tests can prove that the claim is bogus. Some people like to feel like martyrs. There is Munchausen’s Syndrome by proxy wherein a parent claims that his or her child has an illness and reports all sorts of symptoms. The parent might convince the child that he or she is suffering from it.

In conclusion, this essay agrees with the title statement to a very considerable extent. It is easily observable that people seldom face up to an unappealing truth. That takes immense amounts of wisdom, moral courage and objectivity. Sadly, all too many people are subjective, unduly emotive and suffer from unwisdom.

The United States is controlled by the military-industrial complex. You might think this is an off the wall conspiracy theory. Who came up with this idea? Was it a loony leftie? No, it was a Republican president. In his farewell address President Dwight D Eisenhower warned the American people to be on their guard against the overweening influence of the military industrial. President Eisenhower’s valedictory words about the threat posed to democracy by the military-industrial complex could have come from the words of an official Soviet publication.

What is the military industrial complex? It is a circle of military manufacturing companies, the military, mercenaries (er… sorry… I mean ‘private military companies’), hawkish journalists, bellicose politicians and war mongering lobbyists. Another way to put it is it is the war profiteers. The military manufacturing companies want to make fat profits. They pay lobbyists to persuade politicians to vote major contracts through Congress. Military manufacturing companies are canny enough to manufacture a product in as many states as possible. Sometimes if it is something highly complex like a aeroplane they can make the wings in one state, the cockpit in another, the engine in another etc…. so that senators and representatives from a multitude of states have a vested interest in voting through this defense contract. It is pork barrel politics at its most pigheaded and porcine. Journalists for war mongering channels such as Fox ‘News’ become cheer leaders for bombing brown people. Politicians receive bribes, I mean, donations to vote through these contracts. Military officers once they leave military service can find a comfortable stable as a lobbyists, journalist, or executive at a military manufacturing company. Many of the people in the non-military parts of the war profit industry are part-time members of the US military. You might be a politician who is in the US Army Reserve or a journalist who is in the National Guard etc… There is a revolving dor between the various sections of the military-industrial complex. If you are a politician who loses your place in Congress you can become a lobbyist, journalist of military manufacturing executive.

Being voted out is increasingly unlikely. The United States has got gerrymandering down to a fine art by packing and cracking. The United States is the country that gifted the world with the term gerrymander. The expression is derived from the name of a Governor of Massachusetts and Vice-President of the United States: Elbridge Gerry. He drew district boundaries shaped like a salamander. Electoral district boundaries are drawn with the express intention of maximizing partisan advantage. This is about distributing your support as efficiently as possible and your opponent’s support as inefficiently as possible. Packing means concentrating your support in a district such that you can be confident that you will win. You do not want just over 50% of the people in the district to support your party. That is too close. There are the vagaries of individual candidates, the economic cycle, turnout and so forth. 51% would be too close for comfort. You want about 55% of the people in the district to be your supporters bearing in mind that there are only two parties of serious significance in the United States. The fact that there are only two parties of note in such a gigantic and diverse country is a grave indictment of the United States. You should not have too much over 55% of the people on your side in any one electoral district. That would be overkill and waste votes. Conversely, you want your opponents support to be close to 100% in other districts. This means that his or her support is squandered by being so heavily concentrated in one electoral district. You cannot prevent your opponent winning any representation therefore seek to minimize it by keeping it corralled in a small number of electoral districts.

Because the flagrantly partisan nature of re-districting in the United States most electoral districts are non-competitive. The minor party does not stridently campaign in most districts. Once the Republicans have won a district several times the Democrats there become demoralized and are unlikely to bother vote. Others move away. Therefore, a district where the Republicans won 55% of the vote several times consecutively turns into one where they won 65% regularly. The same is true in Democrat held constituencies. A very small number of districts changes hands at each election. In the so-called blue wave election in 2018 the Democrats gained under 10% of the districts in the House of Representatives.

There are tens of millions of praiseworthy Americans who recognized that much has gone deeply wrong in the United States. The twisted cult of militarism stalks the land. This is a far cry from the vision of the Founding Fathers. They rightly recognized that an overmighty military could be a weapon in the hands of a tyrant. It was against excessive military spending and the undue power of army officers over civilians that the American Revolution started. That is not to mention the hefty impositions levied to pay for all this. The Founding Fathers considered restricting the US Army to 5 000 men. It is perhaps a pity that they did not.

We all know that the US is a military behemonth. Twas not always thus. Until 1941 the US military was decidedly small. The US Navy was formidable since the United States has a very long littoral. Moreover, she possessed islands in the Pacific and the US had made the Caribbean little more than an American lake. But the US Army and the US Marine Corps were not large, not well-equipped and not highly paid. The Second World War was to change that beyond recognition. Until the 1940s most Americans were wisely suspicious of the notion of a bloated military. It was not the American way. They did not want to be lorded over by martinets. America’s boast was that it had no compulsory military service. In so many other nations men were obliged to serve in the armed forces. America being a free country did not compel men to do so. But from 1941 the United States jettisoned some of these most estimable mores.

There are plenty of anti-militarists in America. There are courageous voices raised against the excessive and undue influence of the military-industrial complex. People complain about the heavy taxes which burden then to support the military juggernaut. They are rightly alarmed by the deficit which balloons apace. Why are these voices so seldom heard? The military-industrial complex will not tolerate such dissent.

If the military-industrial complex is to be sustained what does America need? In a word: enemies. The war industry has to invent bogymen if they cannot be found. To some extent that is true with the CIA as well. The war industry is often itching for a war. It would be a pity to be all dressed up and have nowhere to go. If there was no mortal peril what then? Then there would be a serious danger of cutbacks in military spending.

I am not blaming the ordinary Joe who enlists in the US military. Many of the youths who sign up for the US military are escaping poverty. They know little of world politics. ‘There’s not to reason why/ There’s but to do and die…’ There are different sorts of personalities in the US military as there are in any other vast organization. Some of them are amiable and others are at least decent.

The blatantly unfair electoral district system calls into question America’s incessantly repeated claim to be the pinnacle of democracy. The US mission to export democracy by cruise missile is hard to credit.

The war profiteers do not want peace breaking out. That would spell doom for their jerk circle. It would suit the war industry if we had Bellum omnium contra omnes.

The US has hundreds of military bases. Many are on the border of the Russian Federation. Russia feels hemmed in, menaced and encircled. Imagine if the Russian Federation concluded a formal military alliance with America’s neighbours. Supposing Russian troops were stationed in Canada, Mexico and the Bahamas? Then Uncle Sam would go apoplectic. When Soviet troops were stationed in Cuba in 1961 the Americans felt very threatened. Cuba had the absolute right to form a defensive alliance with another sovereign state. The Cubans had good reason to seek Soviet military assistance. They knew that Langley Farm was plotting the overthrow of Cuba’s government.

It is hard to believe that the US is under threat. It defines its security as the insecurity of everyone else. Other nations must be vulnerable to America or else America gets scared.

Some right wing opinion forms have excoriated the military-industrial complex. Pat Buchanan is perhaps the foremost of them. He is the scourge of the welfare-warfare state. He noted that the Democrats started the Spanish American War, the First World War, military interventions in Nicaragua and the Caribbean, the Second World War, the Korean War and the Vietnam War. However since then Republicans invaded Grenada, Panama, Somalia, Iraq and Afghanistan. The trouble is that Buchanan makes no convincing show of being an isolationist. He served in the Reagan White House. Reagan was one of the most military interventionist presidents of all time. Buchanan excoriates the welfare-warfare state.

What are some of the core propaganda messages of the war profit industry in the US? Muslims are bad. Foreigners are a threat. We must defend our allies. Our allies do not spend enough on weapons so we must spend more. Spend more and more and then eventually we will have permanent peace and be able to cut back on spending.

This peace dividend when the US can afford to slash its military budget never, ever comes. There were some notable reductions under Clinton. But since George W Bush the cost of so called ‘defence’ has spiraled. Washington Rules by Andrew J Bacevich is a searing indictment of the pernicious influence and destructive deeds of the military-industrial complex. Dr Bacevich is a former career US Army officer and writes with immense authority and unsparing clarity in his expose of the profoundly corrupting effect of the war profiteer caucus in Washington DC.

One of the core fallacies indefatigably propagated by the war profiteers is that the United States is ‘the best last hope of earth’. This highly self-flattering notion is genuinely believed by the gullible. Those who fall for this tripe ought to recall that self-praise is no praise. Many Americans labour under the dangerous delusion that it falls to the United States to remake the world in its own image. Turning another country into an imitation of the United States has been America’s mission since 1945. It has often succeeded and seldom failed. The notion that Iraq can be turned into America has been tested to destruction. There is the unspoken arrogant presupposition that Iraqis want to be Americans. This is as preposterously specious as imagining that Americans want to be Iraqis. But in terms of reducing living standards, increasing gun deaths, misogyny, homophobia, racialism, environmental degradation and religious mania the war profiteers have done a decent job of making the US become more like Iraq under Saddam Hussein.

There are a number of glaring contradictions in the war industry’s claims. If America’s allies fail to pull their weight then the US should not defend them.

The US claims to stand for the furtherance of democracy. Yet the US has so often propped up despots, sawdust Caesars, Punjabi Pinochets, and tinpot tyrants. The war industry says that Muslims are evil. But again and again the US has thrown its weight behind Muslim states. These are usually oppressive religious reactionary regimes in Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Kuwait and Yemen. Washington has opposed and crushed reformists and moderates in the Muslim world.

The US Department of Defense is a misnomer. Should it be called the Department of Attack? The Department of Invasion and Occupation? Or possibly the Department of Bombing Brown People. Since 1945 US Department of Defense has never defended the United States. The US military is invariably fighting abroad – usually a very long way from home.

There are 700 US Military bases in 131 countries. Who is a threat to whom?

Some pointed questions need to be posed in the United States. America spend 60% of all the money spent on the military in the world. For such a mind blowing sum of money Uncle Sam ought to conquer all before him. Yet time and again the United States has been bested by a puny foe such as the Taliban. Even with the able assistance of NATO allies the United States has been unable to extirpate guerrillas armed only with handheld weaponry. By contrast the United States boasts state of the art military technology. America is always pushing back the frontier of the possible with weaponry. It is proud to invent each new generation of weapon systems.

The United States spends more on the military than the next dozen odd countries combined. Most of those nation states are US allies. Why does the United States have to pay so much for its security? Its higher spend it partly because of higher salaries for its military personnel. In countries less affluent than the US salaries are commensurately lower. China, Pakistan, India and Russia all have gargantuan armies but as the average income in these lands is lower than in the United States so is a soldier’s pay. There is another factor that explains the mind boggling sums that America spends on its armed forces. In a word: welfare. Many Americans fulminate about the supposed wickedry of socialism. They may preach the much vaunted virtues of rugged individualism. A man should stand on his own two feet. People must be subjected to the disciplines of the free market and be self-reliant. Except when it comes to the US military. The US military provides for its people from cradle to grave. Its hospitals treat not only US military personnel but also the immediate family thereof. Once a man or woman has completed military service he or she will be treated by Veterans’ Administration hospitals. The US military provides higher education free of charge as well as housing. Some of this education is germane to the US military’s mission. Some of it is not even tangential to the mission. There are US military officers studying degrees in English at Oxford University. In no wise is this connected to their career. It is staggering that American politicians who shriek about pork and spit blood at the notion of publicly funded tertiary education show such largesse to the US military. The military-industrial complex has managed to con people into believing that profligate spending on the armed forces is patriotic. Retrenchment, living within your means, peace and modesty – these should be regarded as patriotic. Braggadocio, the ostentatious show of patriotism, overspending and militarism ought to be perceived as the vices which they are. The perverse cult of toughness has led to America’s love affair with the gun. The tragic consequences of this deeply unhealthy fixation with firearms play out on America’s streets every day. Chauvinism and firearms make an unpalatable combination but when added to machismo the mixture is lethal.

Do all the US bases abroad actually enhance US security? Or are they provocative? Do they make war more likely not less? And if they do raise the chance of war should they not be closed forthwith?

The US abets injustice and mass murder is deemed unmentionable in Washington. The illegal occupation of Palestine is not called what it is – a crime against humanity.

The Colombian coke kingpin Pablo Escobar was a CIA asset. He eventually outlived his usefulness and was assassinated by the United States. But Escobar taught his American paymasters one thing. His policy was ‘silver or led’. People would be offered a choice. They were either paid by him and therefore worked for him or they would be shot dead. The war profiteers have much the same policy only their attitude is not quite so brutal. Budding politicians in the United States need to accept donations from the war profiteers. If they do then they must be obedient puppets in Congress. If not their political career will be killed before it is even born. The war profiteers have their allies in the media to blackguard anyone gallant enough to tell the unvarnished truth about the baleful work wrought by the war industry. It is a rare voice indeed that is raised against the the war profiteers. The brave souls may be stricken in their bloom by vengeful war mongers. The war industry will not tolerate dissent. The journalists who work their wicked will shall calumniate any politician with the moral decency to decry militarism.

What would happen if the war profiteers had their stranglehold on power broken? The US military budget would be scaled back to a sane level. At the moment the United States spends 6% of GDP on the military. This is 3 times the NATO average. The US would then be able to cut taxes, pay off the national debt and fund excellent public services. Publicly funded healthcare for all would be possible. Publicly funded tertiary education all the way to PhD level would be very possible. A green revolution would be eminently feasible. Teachers and other public servants could be decently paid. Welfare payments to the handicapped, the elderly and jobseekers would be brought up to a humane level.

The war profiteers would not possibly stand for that. We simply cannot have social justice can we? We could not abide paying off the national debt and indeed having a sovereign wealth fund. Free healthcare for all is simply intolerable. The government should only cause death not prevent death. That at least is the outlook of the war industry. Making life better for the average American is inadmissible to the war profiteers. A clean environment with all the health benefits that would follow in its train would be quite unthinkable for the war industry.

Reducing the US military to a sensible level would defuse tense situations in a number of zones. It would lead to a general change in attitude. For all too many in the US the gun is not the last resort but almost the first. This is why the police in the United States demonstrate a deep seated prediliction for shooting dead unarmed black people. The excuse proffered is often ‘I thought he had a gun’. He is allowed to have a gun! The entrenched defenders of police murders of black people tend to be gun nuts. They are those who say that anyone should carry any gun anywhere anytime. They would send five year olds to school with guns and grenades. You think I am joking? Sacha Baron Cohen did a video in 2018 when he interviewed a US gun nut Philip Van Cleave who proposed just that. Van Cleave is not a nobody – he is President of the Virginia Citizens’ Defense League. That is no petty organisation. Its viewpoint is almost mainstream in the United States. These same firearm obsessives then use the excuse that a police officer imagined a black person possessed a gun to say that murdering black people is entirely legal and ethical. It underscores yet again the strong strain of racism that exists among a large section of American society.

The polluters, the racists, the war industry and the robber barons form a tight little circle. This axis of evil is called the Republican Party. Unfortunately, it also finds considerable representation in the Democratic Party too. Sometimes I feat that the United States is past saving.

Permanent war seemed the new normal. However, with the withdrawal from Afghanistan there is a glimmer of hope. Has Uncle Sam learnt a very painful and costly lesson?

If the US cut its military down to size it might think about its prison population. It is well known that the US has the highest prison population per capita in the world. This is the prison-industrial complex. Many of the same factors are as play here as are found in the military-industrial complex. The corrupting effect of political donations is plain to see. If the war profiteers were tackled then the prison profiteers might follow. America might begin to see that violence is not the solution to every problem. Sure some people belong in prison but not three million of them. A third of them are there for drug offences. In some cases this is possession. It was a victimless crime. It was never alleged that the so-called felon did anyone the tiniest bit of harm. How odd that the land of the free should be addicted to making its people unfree.

Doctors should always maintain patient confidentiality and act with probity. Explain what is meant by the above statement. Why might probity be important in a good doctor? Under what circumstances might an honest doctor be justified in revealing patient details in the course of their professional practice?

——————–

Patient confidentiality is the medical ethic which requires physicians to refrain from revealing information about patients to third parties. A doctor has access to a patient’s files and he or she has consultations with a patient. A patient will reveal a lot of highly sensitive personal information. Patients often find it excruciatingly embarrassing to talk about certain issues such as their sex lives or secret drug abuse. A patient must trust a doctor not to disclose the content of these consultations. Moreover, a patient will receive diagnoses and be on a course of treatment. A patient usually does not want everyone to know about this. This information is the patient’s information and he or she may choose to reveal this information or to keep it secret. It is not the doctor’s information and it is not his or her right to reveal this.

Probity is honesty in the widest possible sense. A doctor should refrain from lying to a patient unless absolutely necessary. A doctor should not say things that are literally true but in fact misleading. Doctors have the public trust and it is vital that they do not abuse this trust or undermine trust in the medical profession by a lack of probity. Probity extends to doctors not cheating in their examinations. They must also behave in consonance with the highest Hippocratic principles. That is to say to act disinterestedly in always striving to achieve the best outcome for a patient. A doctor is also required to abide by a patient’s wishes if the patient is an adult of sound mind and it is a non-emergency situation.

Doctors must have regard to the reputation of the medical profession. Probity requires them to avoid bringing the profession into disrepute by dishonest, criminal or other unethical behaviour that is unrelated to their profession. For example, a doctor who racially abuses people away from his practice would be in breach of probity. A doctor who lies to avoid getting points on her licence for speeding in her car is in breach of the requirement of probity. A doctor who takes illegal drugs is also breaching the probity ethic. Serious breaches of probity can lead to being struck off the medical register.

Probity is vital in a good doctor because doctors need to earn the trust and respect of the public. Some patients will not come to a doctor who has a reputation for dishonest and unethical conduct. Some who come to such a doctor will not speak candidly about embarrassing matters.

Under highly unusual circumstances breaking medical confidentiality might be permissible. If a married man tests positive for HIV he should be encouraged to inform his spouse. If he refuses to do so then the doctor will have to do so to reduce the risk that the spouse will contract an incurable and terminal illness. This can only be done for grave illnesses.

In an emergency situation a doctor might have to tell another doctor or a nurse something such as the patient is a haemophiliac. This is so appropriate treatment can be provided. It is not done simply because people want to gossip.

If a patient reveals something indicative of child abuse – whether sexual or physical – then the doctor must inform the police and social services. If he notices that a girl has suffered female genital mutilation then he or she must disclose this even without the consent of the patient. Pursuant to police investigations medically confidential information can be shared with the police if there is a court order to do so.

Even revealing a patient’s age can be a breach of confidentiality. Patients can be very touchy about this.

Doctors can of course disclose confidential medical information with the express permission of patients. That is not a breach of confidentiality. That is a normal thing to do in the course of professional practice.

Absolutely stunning!

The Biography of the Rev Fr David Johnson

The Reverend Father David William Johnson M.A. (Cantab) has died at the age of 66. Johnson was a troubled and troublesome figure of fun. The death of this whisky priest in an Abingdon nursing home ends a maelstrom of mirth, mischief and malice. David will be remembered as very unwise, very unholy and very dirty old man. He was a most scabrous, splenetic, squiffy, scapegrace, sybaritic, scandal-struck scoundrel. David was so often uproariously funny and outrageously rude. His liver shall be buried separately with full military honours. His rabelaisian rodomontades, xenophobic screeds and waspish wit were inimitable. David was a most irreverent reverend. As David liked a joke at anyone else’s expense this obituary shall continue in that spirit. Here was a priest who committed every sin in the Decalogue except perhaps wilful murder. Verily, David was the Anglican answer to a Borgia pope. The main consequence of his death is that Guinness’ share price has plunged!

Rev Fr David Johnson was a puzzling and wearying amalgam of good and bad traits. I shall not stint from showing him warts and all. To show the whole man I have to put the bitch into obituary. It was as though his entire life was a harlequinade of performance art. There are those who say nil nisi bonum de mortuis. David can scarcely be said to have been oversensitive. Therefore, it is meet to write candidly about his riotously funny life. He was never one to pull punches. David always hit a man when he was down. His Edwardian dress sense and studied mannerisms will be sorely missed. It was as though he lived a life of conscious self-parody. He was playing up to the stereotype of a dirty vicar. It seemed as if he had stepped from a production of Gilbert and Sullivan.  He really ought to have been a music hall impresario. Therefore, I offer my remembrances of this man whose virtues and vices were always on a grand scale. He did nothing by half measures – especially drink.

The priest was a study in studied eccentricity. It was hard to tell where the act ended and the man began. Did he know himself?

Despite being a priest, he was a man for whom the seven deadly sins were his ten commandments. Envy, lechery, gluttony, sloth, pride, vanity – these were a few of his favourite things! It is a minor miracle that the NHS managed to keep someone alive after such a madcap career of sozzled iniquity. As David liked to quote Cyril Connolly, ”whom the gods wish to destroy they first call promising.”

Background

David was born at Leicester in the year of grace 1953. He grew up in Newcastle-upon-Tyne. His father was a small time civil servant. His mother was a Scots housewife. Despite being half-Scots he identified as completely South British. David had one sister to whom he was not close. His relations with his family appear to have been cool. When he was born his father asked the doctor ‘does he have footballers’ legs?’ He did not measure up in this and other regards. His pater has been hoping to sire a sportsman. In other regards David seems to have disappointed his parents. David only stood 5’3” and was not well built. Being a sporting disaster was a cross to bear in football obsessed Newcastle.

David was also a Conservative. His father was a Labour man and his mother was a Liberal. That was because she said one must always stick up for the underdog plus Jo Grimond was nice. His political orientation was another bone of contention at home. Being a teenage Tory in a rock-solid Labour city was another difficulty.

The only anecdote that he related to me of his childhood was of being told they were going to have a picnic. As a little boy he was exhilarated by this. At the last minute he was told they were cancelling it. Why? To teach him to cope with disappointment. Whether they were so cruel I do not know. But it clearly signifies his lack of love for his parents.

Many of the apercus that follow come from the horse’s mouth. David was rarely guilty of veracity. Therefore you must take these with a large pinch of salt. If these stories are false they still reveal much about the man. This is what he would have liked to have happened and what he would have us believe.

The family belonged to a Nonconformist church. David found it judgmental and uninspiring. He came to the Church of England which seemed life affirming to him. It was filled with light and colour and everything uplifting and positive. He remained a zealous Anglican for the rest of his days. The Evangelical wing of the church did not hold much appeal for him with its tendency to teetotalism. His sexual awakening cannot have endeared him to a strain of Christianity that was so censorious.

Dame Allen’s School was the one that David attended. Most boys there spoke with mild Geordie accents. David affected a stratospherically posh accent. He explained this by saying his headmaster was Churchill’s aide de campe and his mother was an elocution teacher. In the end he sounded more like a Dalek.  Thought when he wanted to he could put on a Geordie accent so thick as to be impenetrable. He spoke in the BBC accent circa 1939. It was indicative of his melodramatic and endlessly creative character. That was what he was to do for the rest of his life. Flamboyant and sanguine; he was a fireball of energy and emotion. He was forever reinventing himself and playing a part as if on stage. So much of his persona was performative.

At school his textbooks were from the 1930s. They assured people that there could never possibly be another war because of the League of Nations collective security. As David later commented, ‘well ha, bloody, ha.’

Growing up in the shadow of the Second World War he was acutely aware that most of his schoolfellows were the sons of veterans. His father on the other hand had spent the war as a functionary. That must have taken some living down. Presumably he was bullied. By early adolescence he was a homosexualist in self-understanding. How much of a choice was it to be gay? If he were a hetero he would not have got many girls being the runt of the litter as he was. Despite his diminutive stature he never lacked for self-assurance. It simply never occurred to David that people might be displeased to see him.

David won a twist and shout competition as an adolescent.  That was principally due to elan vital and not technical accuracy. He was also a champion debater. I surmise this was more owing to ebullience and panache then logical reasoning.

An undersized, queer, bookish and bespectacled sort who is useless at games is apt to be bullied especially if his father was a ‘shirker’ in the war. I wonder if alcohol was him self-medicating for childhood angst and sorrow. He was not given to self-pity. But in a rare moment of introspection he told me that his problem was that no one had ever loved him. In fairness he never seemed to have loved anyone else in either the romantic or the familial sense.

If he had been a hetero he would not have got far. A weedy, midget alcoholic was unlikely to be a lothario.

Though David was a fantasist and pathological liar it is telling that he did not embellish his background. He unfailingly kowtowed to the quality. Was it not tempting for him to invent a more chequered or upper crust lineage for himself?

As an adolescent he began his lifelong romance with alcohol. He tried to conceal this from his parents. But he was found out. He joked, ”My mother never knew I drunk until one night I came home sober.”

Cambridge

David was accepted at Cambridge to read Theology. He went up to Selwyn College in 1973. Despite his lack of height and his modest background he was blessed with boundless self-confidence and a very forward nature. It simply never occurred to him that people might not be pleased to see him. He threw himself into the Cambridge Union. This suited his talents to a T. Though no Shakespearean he surely believed that all the world’s a stage.

When a dosgbody at the Union he was once tasked with meeting a speaker for that evening at the railway station. The speaker was Rev Martin Smyth MP who was an Ulster Unionist. It being the height of the Ulster Troubles the young David was petrified that he would be assassinated by the IRA.

The young David also joined the Conservative Association. David was an ardent monarchist and a sentimental imperialist. At this stage he also developed his lifelong devotion to the demon drink. He also acquired a reputation for being a crashing snob, a shameless social climber and incorrigible name dropper. If it was his aim to make a splash he certainly succeeded. David was also an incurable rouee and rapscallion. Bibito ergo sum ought to have been his motto.

For the first time David was able to mingle with jeunesse doree. It must have been quite an eye opener. I doubt family finances had run to anything in the way of dash. His contrived upper class accent never slipped. He spoke in the clipped cadences and lingering languorous vowels of a 1940s newsreel.

As an undergraduate he had a reputation for being of a bent, well,… bent! Homosexuality had been de-criminialised only a few years before. It was still very much disapproved of and could be an impediment to many a career. As a Ganymede he found many of his ilk at Cambridge. The expression ‘raving homosexual’ might have been invented for him. Despite his incessant filthy talk he did not claim to have bedded many males. Though he said he had some physical encounters so far as I know he never had a boyfriend.

By his own admission David was not too scholarly. But he just about got through the course. In his holidays he worked as a civil servant. It was the sort of virtuous tedium that he reviled.

At Cambridge David was fond of playing pranks on people. According to himself he tricked some freshers into providing urine samples and leaving them on the desk of an unpopular don. He was to continue such japes throughout his life.

One of David’s best practical jokes was the faux ceremony of the bathing of the high professor. People processed in full academic regalia to the Cam where a don ritually dipped one toe into the water. He also chivvied bemused Japanese tourists into standing on one leg for a minute’s silence.

The acme of his time by the Cam was his election unopposed as President of the Cambridge Union. He served in Easter term 1976. His opposite number at Oxford was Benazir Bhutto who according to himself he came to know well. She later became the first woman to serve as Prime Minister of Pakistan.

When David was President of the Union he colluded with the Oxford Union ‘kidnapping’ him. This was a time honoured practice at the farewell debate: the last debate of the term. By tradition the farewell debate is a light hearted debate full of in-jokes. It is all self-indulgent and sparsely attended. Some ‘speeches’ are actually songs.

The Oxonians drove over to Cambridge and seized him at water pistol point in a public place. David was then driven to Oxford and ‘held prisoner’ at the Oxford Union for a few hours while generously plied with food and booze. The debate commenced that evening. The climax of the debate was having David wheeled into the chamber tied up in a supermarket trolley. The prisoner was then set at liberty to participate in the debate.

Cambridge exacted revenge by ‘abducting’ David’s Oxonian analogue: the Honourable Rupert Soames. Hon Soames just so happened to be Churchill’s grandson. This was a fact that gratified David no end.  Hon Soames was then tied up and placed in the window of an academic outfitters as though he were a dummy. 40 years after Ruper’s kidnapping he was still on speaking terms with David.

An exact contemporary of David’s at Cambridge was one Michael Portillo. This London grammar schoolboy was at Peterhouse. At that time the college was a hotbed of homosexuality known as Poofterhouse and the undergraduates – all male – were known by girls’ names. Portillo was known as Polly since it was similar to his surname. By the time I met David people were speaking of Portillo as the Tories great white hope. But Portillo was completely anonymous at Cambridge. He spent most of his time with a don with whom he was in a sexual relationship. David was truthful enough to say he had never heard of Portillo when at Cambridge. It would have been tempting to invent some scandal about Portillo when Portillo was the supposed Conservative saviour. According to David the young Portillo spent most of his time abed with a middle-aged don.

As finals approached, he was told in advance that they had decided to award him a 2:2. He was no intellectual nor was he diligent. David was more bibulous than bibliophile. But they could not very well fail 25% of the people reading his subject. There were only four on the course. This tale, like the others, comes courtesy of the late D Johnson of happy though inglorious memory. As a real pissant it might have been an uphill struggle to secure a good degree.

Johnson’s sister was at Cambridge at the same time as him. They spent no time together. She was a typical left winger and had no time for his reactionary penchant. Apparently, she speaks with a slight Newcastle as one would expect for a middle class Novocastrian. His sister married a man of the same attitude as herself and they had two children. She went on to become a model civil servant. It was the sort of blameless bourgeois domesticity that David found insufferable. Not for him suffocating conformity!  As an Anglican priest he is supposed to bless marital bliss. To make matters even worse his sister was virtuous enough to qualify as a doctor in middle age.

At Cambridge David got to know Henry Bellingham. This Old Etonian and former Guards officer was the sort of person David adored. Bellingham was later elected MP for Walpole’s old seat: King’s Lynn. Bellingham was of course not a Whig though!

Whilst up he voted Yes to staying in the EEC. He did so because he believed it would lead to cheap booze. At least he had his priorities right. He said France’s motto was liberty, equality and adultery. His own appeared to be vulgarity, venality and drunkenness.

By his early 20s David had started out on a well-worn path for a young fogey: High Church, High Tory and High Camp. It was a path from which he never once deviated.

Despite being a practising Anglican David seems to have been utterly devoid of Christian morality or charity. He quoted with approbation a Cambridge contemporary whose motto was: marry for money and fuck for fun. Another of his undergraduate friends was Tucker. David unfailingly called him ”Fucker Tucker.”

What was he to do when he graduated? He applied to Cuddesdon Theological College. The chaplain of Selwyn did not approve of David’s antics. But he loathed Cuddesdon even more. To spite Cuddesdon he provided David with a magnificent reference. The glowing reference did the trick. The aim was to destroy Cuddeson. David did not quite manage it. He tried bloody hard though! An alcoholic catimite is probably not what the Church was hoping for.

What else was David to do? He lacked the intellect or conformity for law. As a teacher he would have been laughed out of the classroom. He did not have the mathematical ability or work ethic for finance. His low boredom threshold ruled out the civil service. As for the diplomatic service: one day with him as a diplomat would have caused the Third World War.

Into the Church

What attracted him to a clerical career? It might have been the dressing up. I never met a man who so thrilled to dress up. The Church offered him incomparable fashion opportunities. It is probable that he perceived an ecclesiastical career as a 40 year long fancy-dress party.  The Church of England with its established status and connection to royalty was irresistible to such a snob and name dropper. It also appealed greatly to the poseur and the showman in him. He adored the sound of his own voice. The church guaranteed him an audience. David was an attention addict which explains his flamboyant sartorial style. It was also a comfortable berth for someone not cut out to make it in a competitive career. David does not seem to have had any genuine spirituality. He almost never talked about religion. I suspect the topic bored him rigid. He would have considered Jesus a long haired leftie drip. In point of fact I never heard him mention Jesus and he seldom alluded to God at all. ‘Meek and mild’ was not exactly David’s style. He was never one to hide his light under a bushel. His reverence was as unchristlike as can be imagined. Not for him a life of sacrifice and self-abnegation.

David presumably saw High Anglicanism as a life of lace dropped sodomy. This is the gay wing of the C of E. That is not to say that all or even most High Anglican clergy but some are. Gays were very thin on the ground in the Low Church back then. There was something indubitably effeminate about the prissiness of High Anglican chasubles, bells and smells etc…

The High Church was David’s faction within Anglicanism. The iconography and nomenclature of Anglo-Catholicism held an irresistible appeal for him. He was all right with latitudinarians. However, he felt disdain for the Low Church. He scorned the Low Church as do gooders, killjoys and loonies. He was also scathing about them for being prudish and regarding his sexual inclination as deviant. By contrast David’s theme tune might as well have been penis angelicus! David felt very much at home with fellow incense wagging misogynists.

It was the frippery, social status and performance aspects of being a clergyman that gratified David. The Church held an unparalleled appeal to a man of his raging vanity and irrepressible theatricality. David always craved an audience. He had a very forward personality. The Church provided him with a stage to project his self-importance. It also provided him with ample scope to pursue his ruling passions: alcoholism and homosexual ribaldry. To a man so prurient there was no other choice to be made.

If David worshiped any deities they were Dionysus and Mammon. Though only half Scots he was double Scotch both in his attitude to alcohol and money. His taste for strong water was unquenchable. His moral philosophy appeared to be: I drink therefore I am.

Cuddeson is a few miles outside Oxford. There a grace was said ”may the boys of this college all be learned, wise and sober virgins by the grace of Christ Jesus. Amen”. Learned, wise, sober or virginal could never be said to describe David Johnson.

There was a fire walking duty at Cuddesdon. The college was of course all male: this being long before the days of women priests. Every seminarian had his own room. David liked to the ring bell in the middle of the night. A corridor with 8 single bedrooms in it would have 12 students running out of it? Because the male students were bedhopping. The seminarians were often semenarians.

David was openly gay in middle age. But he never seemed to have had a boyfriend. He vouchsafed that he had once been to a male brothel in the 1980s. As a punter not a rentboy! He recalled the youths there were all colours, shapes and sizes. When I asked him about it again he changed his story and said it was ”nother priest” who had been. I distinctly recall who he had shortened ‘another’ to ‘nother’ in that phrase.

In the 2000s David told me, ”I do not have sex because it destroys relationships. It creates all sorts of petty jealousies and tensions.” The truth may have been more prosaic. By then he was so unappetising not even an alley cat would bed him. His years of overconsumption of alcohol had presumably rendered him incapable of rising to the occasion. He could of course have made his orifices available. So far as I know he was not active by then. He acknowledged sharing a bed with men. ‘And when you wake up in the morning it is nice to wank off.’ He appears to have had no predeliction for buggery.

In the 1970s he had to be a little discrete about his orientation. It would have been frowned upon as a perverse proctological proclivity. Homosexuality was seen as deviancy at the time. In 2000 he said to me that a third of the Anglican clergy were gay. This was surely a huge overestimate. For David gaiety and gayness came together. He was self-confessedly ”as queer as a three pound note.” David was very much the homosexual’s homosexual. Did I mention that he was gay?

When the Church told David ‘to convert the heathen’ he appears to have misheard this as ‘to pervert the heathen.’ If so then he did so with missionary zeal. I would guess he was a catimite. He quipped that when two gays met and found themselves to be takers rather than givers it was called a ”catamite-astrophe.” So far as I am aware he nver had a boyfriend and never wanted one.

Despite never being a transvestite there was something undoubtedly effeminate about his manner. His timbre, his movements, his languid diction and his fixation with clothing were all unmanly.

London

After Cuddesdon David was ordained a deacon. He moved to London. There he continued his life’s mission of vulgarity, venality, alcoholism and buggery. He was attached to a parish in Fulham. The first time he served communion he made the pope look like Paisley by comparison. His vicar did not approve of his style and did not attend.

David was not just homosexual he was also homosocial. He did not seem to have any female friends. The one exception was Christine Hamilton. He told me, ‘I would very much like to have married Christine Hamilton. And I did marry her: to Neil!’ Indeed, he performed the wedding ceremony of what later became one of Britain’s most notorious couples. Christine was a domineering sort. Did he want a dominatrix? I never knew him to express admiration for a woman’s looks even in an aesthetic sense. He really was a 24 carat gay. Pharasaism was not one of his besetting sins.

It was a matter of much amusement that some of his Cantabrigian contemporaries were struggling to make it in London. These men of thrusting ambition often found themselves underperforming. Rather than reside in the more chi chi boroughs they were forced by pecuniary circumstances to subside in London’s more unsalubrious districts. David skewered them by saying that they would live in Clapham and pronounce it ‘Claam’ to pretend it was somewhere posher or live in Stockwell and call it Saint Okewell. He loved to puncture pomposity despite being egregiously stuck up himself.

Some of David’s Cambridge friends started to get engaged. In those days a man could only become affianced to a female of the species. Some of David’s circle he had assumed were ‘not the marrying type’ in the parlance of those lavender days. But many a man whom he assumed to be a confirmed bachelor became plighted to a young lady. David expressed his cynical ‘surprise’ when this happened. He told me an umbrella was the wedding present that one gave to a queen whom one knew to be marrying simply to disguise his homosexual preference. If a man married a woman for this purpose she was known as a ‘beard’. The trouble was the luckless woman might not even know her husband was gay. There were many lavender relationships at the time. Many gays were deep in the closet in those days. It is hard for many people to realise now just how socially unacceptable homosexuality was in the 70s and 80s. Though not a crime it was certainly a sacking offence in most jobs.

In 1977 he was enthused by the Silver Jubilee. His local publican was an Irish republican. Despite that he bedecked his establishment in Union Flags. David was ever the passionate monarchist.

The Queen was semi-divine in Johnson’s opinion. His other deities in his pantheon were Oenone and Bacchus. Remarkably even in his age he was not especially florid face.

Whilst in London David produced a spoof edition of the Church Times which is the C of E’s house journal. His publication was entitled Not the Church Times. But apart from the title it was so realistic it could easily have been mistaken for the genuine article. The font and house style were imitated perfectly in every particular. The headline was bemusing: ‘Church to covenant with Vanuatu headhunters.’ There were many more hair raising and howlingly funny stories like this. It treated the enthronement of a new bishop of London as the most awe striking event since the Resurrection. It was all part of his irrepressible urge to make elaborate and uproarious practical jokes. He was blessed with an outsized sense of the ridiculous.

From 1982-87 David worked at Church House.  He was on the Board for Mission and Unity. This is the nexus of the Church of England. He handled relations with the Catholic Church and the black churches. He called them ‘papes and nigs’. It is astonishing that someone as deliberately offensive as David was put in charge of such a delicate issue. Fr Johnson could never be accused of cultural sensitivity. He referred to the Roman Catholic Church as ”The Italian mission to the Irish in this country.” He explained, ”the Italians preached Catholicism but the Irish believed it.” One of his party pieces was to sing ‘Doin the Vatican Rag’ by Tom Lehrer. So often he was a reactionary provocateur.

Fr Johnson found Nonconformists insufferably tedious. He also had to handle relations with them and did not always do so with finesse. He found them frustrating as they were not easy to bait. He preferred dealing with the purple prelates of the Roman Church. On one occasion he used contacts in the RAF to have a French bishop flown home by them when the bishop needed to go back to France in an emergency. Jono also arranged for a welcome hamper to be delivered to all guests of Church Huse.

Whilst at the Anglican nerve centre he was a minor canon of Westminster Abbey. He liked politicking. He has status, money, access to booze and boys. The AIDS crisis in the 1980s might have caused him to become a little more circumspect.

As David liked to recall he acted as a chaplain to the Brigade of Guards. He said, ‘I served with but not in’. At least he was honest enough not to pretend to have been a proper forces padre.  I am sure that David was an ornament to the Household Brigade! He remarked that the Irish Guards were the most fun of all the regiments of Foot Guards. He was told when attempting to enter the officers’ mess a sergeant quipped to him in a strong Irish brogue, ”You’re not enough pissed to come in here.” That was astonishing given his insatiable thirst for booze. Bearing in mind he weighed 8 stone ringing wet his capacity to consume alcohol without getting blind drunk was staggering.

His reverence spent some time in Rome. He was thrilled to be presented to His Holiness the Pope. The grandiloquence and the sartorial pretentiousness of the Catholic Church was almost irresistible to him. He must have fantasised about donning the jupes of a silk scarlet soutane and riding side saddle up the Quirinial Hill. How David would have adored being a prince of the church. There is a shade that he hankered after called crushed cardinal. He would have been in his element wearing the red hat. Being borne aloft in Sedia Gestatoria must have been his wet dream. Did his aspirations ever rise to the Throne of St Peter? Humility and mortification of the flesh were not for David!

The Church decided that it was time that David put his dynamism and gregariousness to use in a parish. He was interviewed for a number of posts. ”They have a hilarious way of asking you if you are gay. The interviewer embarrassedly studies his fingernails and says ”So do you have an emotionally supportive relationship?”. I reply, ”Yes, he is big, German, musclar and hairy and he licks me all over in bed.” And the interviewer is a bit shocked until I say, ”I have a German shepherd.” ” Evidently this cut the mustard.

Quite why he was let loose on a rural parish I am unsure. Had he blotted his copybook so badly in London that Church House wanted to get rid of them? They palmed him off on another diocese. Leicestershire was about to get a lot noisier!

A parish

In 1987 David was sent to a parish in Leicestershire. He had to drive around. His alcohol abuse became an unmanageable problem. Before long he was frequently preaching to the police. He was repeatedly pulled over by the police for drink driving. ‘Eventually the magistrates and I agreed that I would not drive anymore.’ David was unashamed about his dypsomania.

Cottaging for the odd blowjob cannot have endeared David to his parishoners. It was discomobobulating to be propositioned by a man of the cloth particularly if you were touching cloth. Curiously, seeking rough trade in a public lavatory was not considered exemplary conduct in the Church. Alcohol also made him the soul of indiscretion about his frolicsome activities. The staid old maids and retried colonels had been hoping for someone more conventional.

On the issue of same sex attraction David was not a hypocrite. He scorned those who engaged in queer bashing. He noted that the books of the Bible that railed against homosexuality also permit slavery and forbid wearing clothes of more than one fibre.

Fr Johnson invited the Right Honourable Enoch Powell MP to preach at his church.  David liked to refer to Powell as ‘the prophet’. It was less than 20 years since Powell’s notorious Rivers of Blood tirade. Nearby Leicester had a lot of Indian immigration. Some thought that Powell would harp on about the wickedness of immigration. In fact, he never mentioned the subject. This was the only Sunday the church was packed. The sermon was recorded. Listening it to again later David noticed that there was not a single um or er at all.

At dinner Johnson had hired a cook and butler to serve them. He did not wish to miss a moment of Powell’s conversation.

David later recalled that when another Tory MP came to preach at his church only five people came ”and they were all my servants.” In David’s fantasy he was a well to do 19th century vicar from a landed family.

Colour blind from birth; David once got himself into hot water because of his debility. He bought an RAF overcoat (insignia removed) from a military surplus shop. He went to France to represent the Church of England at a conference. On return to the United Kingdom he took the train home. Aboard the choo choo a man came up to him and said, ”It is fucking disgusting when bastards like you wear that coat.” David suspected he was being accused of wearing an RAF coat to which he was not entitled. David defended himself, ”I shall have you know that I used to be a chaplain at RAF Abingdon so I am entitled to wear this coat.” The man explained, ”I am an expert in Second World War memorabilia. That is an SS overcoat.” David was perplexed, ”but it is RAF blue.” His interlocutor corrected him. ”Are you blind? It is black. It is an SS overcoat!”

In the early 90s he cultivated a beard that he said made him look like George V. Sitting in the Oxford and Cambridge Club one day a man saw him and remarked loudly, ‘these fucking Jews get everywhere!’  This tale may well be apocryphal.

When the Church of England considered ordaining women David was adamantine in his opposition to this. For him, the ordination of females was the final horror. He regarded it as outright heresy. Jono was no believer in gender equality. However, when the change came this confirmed misogynist did not cross the Tiber. Why would he became a Catholic? ”I do not want to play second fiddle to Fr Seamus O’Pig ”, he said tartly.

David’s contribution to literature was The Spiritual Quest of Francis Wagstaff.  The tome was co-authored with Toby Forward. It consists of silly letters they sent to various public figures. It was David’s answer to the Henry Root or the H Rochester Sneath letters of the 1950s. These mocking epistles are full of ludicrous requests. It was his attempt to send up th Church of England. It succeeded in spades.

Francis Wagstaff was a figment of his mischievous imagination. The character lived in Yorkshire and was part of the equally fictitious Old Northern Catholick [sic] Church of the East Riding. He described a vacans patriarchate run out of a semi-detatched house in Scunthorpe. Wagstaff wrote to numerous well known Anglican clergymen. These people replied to Wagtsaff assuming him to be a real person. It was so typically David. His magnum opus is as droll as it is iconoclastic. A letter to a bishop compliments on his toupee and asks where he bought it. The prelate writes back to inform him ”my hair is my own”. Wagstaff writes once again to opine that ”surely Christian charity comes before mere personal vanity?”. In another epistle Francis Wagstaff writes to say to a certain bishop that he met Shagger Reilly who knew the bishop when he was in the Royal Navy. Shagger says the bishop is ”a short arse – forgive the serviceman’s slang.” It goes on in that vein. He also tricked a bishop into acknowledging that he was a Tory. That was at a time when the Conservative Party was deeply unpopular.

It got far, far worse. In the mid 1990s the press was full of stories of paedophile priests. They had especially preyed on scouts. In one missive Johnson saw fit to ask a prelate, ‘would you like to be patron of a right wing leatherbound boy scout movement free from any of the sexual moralising which causes so much idle gossip?’ Unsurprisingly the clergyman concerned courteously declined this tempting offer. Within a few months Jono had ridiculed most of the bench of bishops.

The episcopate failed to see the funny side. Unsurprisingly, the book was not greeted with universal acclamation by his flock either. Regular churchgoers did not welcome seeing the Church of England turned into a laughingstock. Some of the proceeds went to charity. This must have been the only time he ever gave a groat to a worthy cause.

As he celebrated one marriage service after he had ”dined well” he pronounced the happy couple man and wife. The groom then asked, ‘May I kiss the bride?’. David did not miss a beat: ‘Why not? You’ve already been fucking her for three years.’

Father Johnson’s thirst grew ever more unquenchable. He had drunk the county dry in terms of alcohol and semen. This was not quite what the old maids of the shire were hoping for in a cleric.

The vicar had all the egotism and tactlessness of beadle in Oliver Twist as well as the self-importance and the sycophancy of Mr Collins from Pride and Prejudice.

By the 1990s David’s antics had been brought to the attention of the bishop. His bad language and over drinking were becoming an embarrassment. David was lent upon to retire on ”health grounds”. He was 41! His ill-health was a code word for his raging alcoholism. You would not get such an overgenerous settlement these days. People said that the C of E was paying him off to keep his mouth shut. But stuffing his mouth with gold did not work. He kept blabbing about scandals in the church. He described John Witheridge as ‘a frightful shit.’

The Church tried to help him dry out. He was sent to a clinic to enable him to give up alcohol. Part of the rehabilitation course was going to a pub and ‘learning to say no.’ The trouble was as soon as he set foot in any pub in Leicestershire the barman would start pouring a Guinness extra cold unbidden. He was widely recognised and his order was known.

Fr Johnson was moved to Cogenhoe, Northamptonshire because he had totally alienated his parishoners in Leicestershire. In Northamptonshire he proved to be a walking disaster zone. Though bonhomous he did not love his fellow man. He was the most sociable misanthrope you could ever meet. Running a parish requires a great deal of tact and diplomacy. These were qualities in which he was sorely lacking. Funerals threw his indifference to the suffering of others into embarrassingly sharp relief.

Fr Johnson’s mordant wit meant he was resourceful in terms of one liners or impersonations. These were uncalled for in a rural parish. Jono sometimes forgot he was in a church and not on the standup comedy circuit. People wanted compline not cabaret.

Decades later Fr Johnson asked a friend, ‘Do you think I would have done better at ministry if I had actually liked people?’ Therein lay the rub. He was fundamentally unsuited to being a parish cleric. His antics let to a total breakdown in parochial relations.

The reverend became choleric and cantankerous when his flock did not take kindly to what may charitably be called his eccentricities. Nor did he like rusticating. The one saving grace of bucolic life was getting sheep as natural lawnmowers for his church.

A sybaritic sodomite was possibly not what the very staid elderly parishioners were looking for. Stories surfaced of him getting shit faced in local hostelieries and loudly giving graphic accounts of his incredibly varied gay sex life. If even only a fraction of this were true then it was enough to make an acidulous Anglican apoplectic. Being a Ganymede was not the done thing in Middle England. It might be hard to remember now how radically attitudes have shifted in a quarter of a century.

Asked for his shortest joke he would say, ”He is called the Archbishop of Canterbury.” David pubished a remark about the archbishop (George Carey) ”His scheming ambition is concealed behind imperfect dentistry.” This hilarious and highly personal insult was not a model of Christian brotherly love.

The Church of England had campaigned zealously against apartheid. Typically, in his attention seeking perversity, David said the demise of apartheid was to be mourned. He was an outspoken Tory in the 1980s. This was the time when the C of E produced ‘Faith in the City’ which was a laceration of Thatcherism for causing mass unemployment. Fr Johnson had slaughtered just about every sacred cow that the Church of England had.

The Church of England found Jono excruciatingly embarrassing. Furious complaint inundated the bishop. The MP for Rutland and Melton, Alan Duncan, was one of those who said to the bishop that Jono needed to be given the old heave ho. Duncan had been President of the Oxford Union just after Jono’s time as his analogue at Cambridge. Duncan had always found Jono too fond of his own voice, unfunny and totally disreputable.

Just before he was removed from his house, he got his hands on a photo of his bishop holding up a pint. David had a farewell card printed with this photo on it and a quotation from the Book of Kings, ‘David fled and made good his escape.’

Oxford

At the positively juvenile age of 41 he was put out to grass. The Church of England let him live in a house in Oxford rent free. His address was 112 Hurst Street.

Why did he choose to live there? He was ‘not going back to Cambridge and being a professional old boy’ he said. Professional old boys are frightful bores – he said. Oxford was almost the same thing.  It was his natural habitat. I would have paid good money to see how his antics whent down in his native Newcastle.

David was puer aeternus. It is a convivial city and full of like-minded people to David. Never once did he voice the least gratitude for the unexampled liberality of the settlement that the Church had granted him.

If the Church believed that by retiring David, he would mellow with age then it was sorrily mistaken. David had not the slightest intention of toning down his lifestyle. He blazed a trail for every reprobate. The reverend carried on his notably harum scarum existence. Did he give up the demon drink? Far from it. At Oxford he was very seldom stable. Perhaps once he disgraced himself by appearing in public sober.

The porter-soaked popinjay washed up in Oxford. But in terms of his opera buffa he was only just beginning. His inventiveness, energy and meanness knew no bounds. His persiflage was too much for many.

The Oxford Union because the focus of his uber extroversion. He was a soi disant people hater but he could not live without an audience. He became known to a generation for Oxonians for nattering to and regaling anyone who would tolerate him. This tireless chatterbox was soon put on an alcohol ban. The reverend found solitude unendurable.

David was still fit as a fiddle. He was perfectly capable of working. He found minimum wage work as a tour guide.

Being contra mundum was his trademark. Oxford is 75 miles from the nearest salt water but David still named his house Seaview Cottage. If you phoned him and got the answering machine it would say that he was either ‘at sea’ or ‘out with the tide.’

Another Anglican said to me that the thing to do for the Church was to unfrock David. The C of E wanted to avoid the negative headlines about defrocking him. However, this other chap argued that the Church should simply have taken it on the chin. The embarrassment of that was less than this loon traipsing from pub to pub in Oxford regaling people with scatological stories and racist epithets all while togged out in full clericals.  The Church’s name was dragged through the mire every time he did this. This caused contempt for the Anglican Church. One Anglican I know crossed the Tiber because of David. This man said that if David represented the Church of England then he would rather become a Catholic than stay in the same church as David. David was as unpriestly as may be imagined. The Church of England was constantly left with egg on its face due to David’s racist rodomontades, ultra-Tory philippics and perverse sexual ravings. People did not expect to meet a clergyman who drank them under the table.

More than one undergraduate told me with absolute conviction that David had never been a priest. They said he was a mentally ill man who dressed up as a priest and had even fooled himself into believing that he was one. People simply could not believe that a real priest or even an ex-priest would do this. No one less suitable has ever worn the sacerdotal breastplate. David was a living argument for anti-clericalism.

In Oxford David was an indefatigable evangelist. He preached a gospel of sodomy and sybaritism. Here he found fertile ground for his unique brand of Anglicanism. It was in no small measure down to him that the Oxford Union became the most outrageous gay bar in Britain. It was his natural habitat and even hunting ground.

It was as though David was playing up to the stereotype of a priest with a penchant for every vice. He made me call to mind the Dirty Vicar Sketch by Monty Python. The man was sordid: bereft of virtue. This bon vivant was in the Church for himself.

In 1995 we went to a Japanese restaurant on the 50th anniversary of Victory of Japan Day. A waiter asked David what he would like. ‘An apology!’ he demanded. He was known to refer to the Japanese as ‘snub nosed, slit eyed little yellow bastards.’ Him calling anyone else ‘little’ was the pot calling the kettle black.  David could not in truth be described as politically correct.

At Oxford David sought out posh freshers. In his late 40s his friends were aged 19. He liked an ingenue. He went weak at the knees for a peer. His reverence always made a beeline for Old Etonians. I could not help surmising that he dearly wished he had been to Eton.

Be it understood that David was not predatory and certainly not a pederast. He mostly got off on merely talking dirty and that was to adults. His vice was liquor not licker.

Knowing David to be dead against female clergy, when he was sent to Oxford the Church put him under the superintendence of a woman priest. David took it as a calculated insult. But even he had to admit that Rosie was reasonable and competent. Yet he scornfully called her ”the priestess”. She did not object to him being a sot and a sod.

As soon as David left home each morning he would walk down to the Union or some other city centre pub in the forenoon. He never took the bus or cycled. The day would be spent drifting from one licensed establishment to another and button-hole anyone he would. He would  pass the time of day with whoever’s ear he could chew off. There was no purpose or routine other than that. He was profoundly bored and under stimulated. That is partly why he grew ever more mischievous. The devil makes work for idle hands. If you are an alcoholic with nothing to do what are you going to do other than drink? By the late 90s he was on an alcohol ban at the Union. It was never rescinded.

Fr Johnson held court for OUCA loons. He was their guru. David had been like them: a young man in a hurry. Like him they were attitudinally and sartorially Edwardian (pronounced ‘’ed WAARD ian’’. They pined for an irrecoverable age of imperialism.

Luncheon found the vicar in an alehouse. He passed the remainder of the day cruising from one licensed establishment to the next. Along the way he would fortify himself with a few liberal swigs from his hip flask. Fr Johnson really was a boozy beggar. But he was not always sloshed. He did not often get drunk. It was just that he never got sober. He could stick it away! The decades of heroic drinking meant that he could outconsume a man twice his size and not be visibly under the influence. He was not permanently pissed. He only drank the juice of the barley when awake.

The reverend father took a lively interest in what he unironically called ‘colonial affairs’. His favourite President of Zimbabwe was the Reverend Canaan Banana. That was partly because he was a churchman but also because of his cartoonish name. Banana’s gayness was another plus.

The vicar addressed the Union and joked ‘Tony Blair invited me to Downing Street. He said ”Dave – you have done more than anyone else for taking alcoholism, foul language, sexual deviancy off the streets – and putting them back into the church where they belong!’‘ David never objected to being identified as a beery swine. Nay, he revelled in it. He was always proud of what he was. His life of unexampled iniquity was spoken about by MPs because he knew a few.

On one occasion I introduced him to someone, ‘This is my brother in law James’ . Next day he called me up to say he had spent all night leafing through Burke’s peerage trying to find which peer of the realm had my surname. He had misheard me saying ‘This is my brother Lord James.’ He was a crashing snob and always kowtowing to the nobility. When I introduced him to Countess Tolstoy he took her hand and gracefully executed a deep bow. I have never witnessed such an obtrusive display of deference to a peeress. Even when stotious – which was any time he was conscious – he was unfailingly obeisant towards the titled. Perhaps he felt they could get away with being an epicurean like him.

In 1999 a ball was held at the Oxford Union that involved seafood being served. A certain undergraduate from St Peter’s ordered oysters and left them in front of a radiator for a few hours before they were served. People unwittingly ate these oysters when they were served later. The results are best not described. Fr Johnson fell victim to food poisoning. He decided to enact vengeance on the witless boy who had accidentally given him food poisoning. Jono sent a parcel to the Union with it addressed to ‘the Secretary. Personal. To be opened strictly only by the secretary.’ The house manager unwisely opened the parcel. He found something made of cloth. Putting his hand in further he felt something squishy and his nostrils were affronted by an overpowering stench. David had sent in his shitty underpants! I later asked him if he really had sent in diarrhoea smeared Y fronts. ‘They were slightly soiled’ the drunkard said grinning wickedly.

In 1999 he held a large celebration for the 20th anniversary of his ordination. By that stage he was already an Oxford character. He was a legend among OUCA loons. I idolised him. His acolytes were often treated to his repertoire of stories. But not everyone was enamoured of his middle-aged adolescent posturing, foulmouthedness and alcoholic antics. As one Oxonian said to me of David ‘he is a warning!’ David was a middle-aged man who had not grown out of freshers’ week. He was known to his acolytes as ‘the Vicar of Cowley’. Some of gli cognoscenti called him ‘Jono.’

OUCA appointed David dean.  He said grace at OUCA termly dinners. Successive presidents of OUCA were at pains not to let him anywhere near the speaker for fear he would mortally offend a Tory grandee. If people were hoping that ‘Father’ Johnson would be a father figure they were to be disappointed. He often attended port and policy. We were often treated to a racist rant by the man in the dog collar. In 2010 OUCA was striving to shake off its bad image. David simply had to spoil this. A journalist came up to see how OUCA had reformed. David was asked how inclusive OUCA was. He answered, ”We are very inclusive these days – look at this boy here. He is Welsh but we let him in anyway.” He was probably not even in a crapulous state when he said that.

In December 1999 at the farewell debate Fr David sang ‘I was a fair young curate then.’ He had a listenable tenor singing voice and carried off his performance with aplomb. Apart from his voice the only instrument he played was the pink oboe.

As a wag David liked writing satirical letters to national publications. The Telegraph published a letter by him saying he was joint master of the Cowley sewer beagles. Like Tony Benn he immatured with age. The reprobate never grew out of a puerile desire to create shockwaves and feel them reverberating back to him. Because David had never grown out of freshers’ week he was forever dining out on tales of Cambridge in the mid-1970s. He could not move on.

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The Millennium

David would sing for his supper. This gay gadfly was an amusing raconteur. He would regale us with hilarious reminiscences and outrageous accents all embellished with plenty of invention. But this middle-aged man demanded that teenagers buy him drinks. Anyone undergraduate who pleaded poverty would be greeted with the words ‘You mean bastard’. By contrast generosity was not among his virtues.

Fr Johnson cadged drinks. He often asked people for cash loans. He would feign amnesia about repaying them. When finally shamed into repaying people he would shout ‘just paying my rentboy’ as he handed over the readies.

Perhaps David intended to set himself up as an Anglican answer to Monsignor Gilbey.Gilbey died shortly after David moved to Oxford. Fr Gilbey was the Catholic chaplain at Cambridge for decades. Alfred Gilbey had also been a notable ‘Priest of Bacchus’ Admittedly Gilber was more about savouring the finest clarets and not about getting three sheets to the wind. Monsignor Gilbey was a guru for young fogies at Cambridge including when David was up. David Johnson liked to dine out on tales about the redoubtable Monsignor Gilbey and his antics. I often heard his repertoire. However, Fr Gilbey was seldom if ever inebriated.

David was full of Gilbey anecdotes. He told us with relish of how when Franco died, Gilbey ordered a full requiem mass. The trouble with that tale is that Gilbey retired several years prior to 1975.

As for his homosexuality by the 2000s he was a non-playing captain. Rumour has it that he went to bed with an undergraduate in the 90s whom David later accused of having lumpy sperm. That is the only Oxonian whom I ever heard had touched Johnson’s Johnson. It was as though he was in a Carry On film. I wondered if David consciously played up to the stereotype of the dirty vicar.

In 2002 I filmed him saying in a restaurant, ‘I scored with Steven Doody in a public lavatory in St Giles at 3 o’clock in the morning.’ People’s jaws dropped when they saw the video.

David made cameos in College Girls. This was a documentary on St Hilda’s broadcast in 2002. He said the election at the Union would be tightly fought and tightly fraught.

The reverend claimed that a certain gentleman of colour with dreadful dentistry offered him oral ministrations. Fr Johnson rebuffed him, ”not with teeth like those.”

Fr Johnson was amused by Doody. Doody wished to be what David was. But times had changed and people like Doody did not get into the Church anymore. Jono had apology cards made for Steven: ‘Steven Philip Doody deeply apologises for…’ and then a series of boxes that could be ticked: outing you, exposing himself, passing out or can’t remember.

On one occasion there was a queeny strop in the Macmillan Room. Doody berated David  ‘You are a disgrace to the cloth.’ David retorted ‘well you never even had the cloth.’ The door of the room had been opened and then let swing back to David. David had his back to it. The door pushed David several inches. He was so tiny and light that it swept him along. It is etched onto my memory.

Anthony James (deceased) said of David ‘what he wants is a big 6 foot guardsman to fuck him’. That would have been a social as well as a sexual fantasy. One of David’s favourite parlour games was to conjecture as to which STDs people had. David never evinced the slightest sympathy for the sick or the poor or anyone in suffering. He could not abide do gooders. The vicar scorned philanthropy. He boasted that he never gave a brass farthing to any charity that helped Commonwealth countries. His logic was that these countries wanted independence and they got it. So they could stew in their own juice.

The Oxford Student made the mistake of claiming he had been unfrocked. It was then obliged under threat of libel to publish a grovelling apology. It wrote a piece entitled ‘Without Prejudice’. It wholly and unreservedly apologised for the offence it had caused. The publication accepted that his reverence was a priest in good standing with the Church of England and with specific permission from the Lord Bishop of Oxford to conduct worship. It further accepted that he had never been unfrocked nor had any processes ever been entered into to unfrock him.

The reverend tickled me pink with Irish jokes. Fr Johnson often told me that I was a bog trotter. And he liked me!  Jono told me he would go to the jungle with me. I assumed that to be flattering. He liked to make catty comments about women’s looks. David had a great gift for mimicry. This was. He was more than passable as accents. As an impressionist he took off facial expressions and hand gestures as effectually as he did the voice and speech patterns. His thespian talents were largely squandered. It was his metier manque.

David spent the days cruising the pubs. He would regale anyone who would listen with his witticisms. This washed-up porter soaked popinjay was not everyone’s idea of good company. In the Union Bar he was forever persiflaging people. He ribbed girls about their visible panty lines.

They say a man should only drink when the sun crosses the yardarm. This was the only thing that David stuck to religiously. Except in this case that meant sunrise rather than sunset. I saw him drink beer at 8 in the morning. He was endlessly self-indulgent. His reverence was as fond of his morning dram as he was his night cap.

Of an afternoon he would haunt The Jolly Farmer or the Castle. Those being the only gay pubs in town. There he sought refreshment as he perused morally disimproving publication called ‘Boyz’. Then he would drift from one alehouse to the next.

David hung around the Oxford Union. He was elected to standing committee in 1999. The former President of South Africa came to visit. F W de Klerk addressed the Union. Fr Johnson asked an overly long question. Years later F W de Klerk returned and recalled his previous visit. ‘There was a turbulent priest.’

Another reason that David haunted the Union was the Bursar. Lindsay Warne was the only woman he desired. He may have perceived a dominatrix in her.  David’s sexuality can perhaps be explained by citing his favourite Reverend Sydney Smith quotation, ”There are three sexes: men, women and priests.”

Understandably David was not everyone’s cup of cha. Some considered him noisome, tedious and tiresome. His attention seeking got up people’s noses. Many dismissed him as a poison dwarf. His living in the past made many despise him. Some loathed him for bringing the C of E into disrepute.

David was always up to mischief. The old rascal ordered Gay and Lesbian Christian Association Literature to be sent to the home address of a troubled fresher.

I shall never forget the first moment I clapped eyes on him.  It was an emergency debate in my first week. The motion before the Oxford Union was that ‘This House Believes that student protest has no effect.’ He made quite an entrance swishing into the debating chamber in full clericals. He gave a speech in which he recalled an apocryphal tale about someone seeing a boat of Papua New Guineans row down a river in a film shown in the 1950s. An Oxford wag shouted, ‘well rowed Balliol’. This was an allusion to the considerable number of our Commonwealth cousins at that college. The vicar claimed that this was the only time that student protest had ever had any impact.

I was transfixed as soon as I saw Fr Johnson. I had to find out who he was. I came to know him very well over the next few years. I was staggered to hear a priest swearing his head off and regaling me with vulgar quips. But he was often deliberately offensive. His schadenfreude was unseemly for a putative man of God. He was a living profanation of the priesthood. His wildest antics were often whilst wearing clericals including a dog collar. He often indulged in racist screeds and foul-mouthed tirades.

David’s voice was like that of a conceited duck. It was slightly nasal and unwavering. He corrected my pronunciation of Kenya and said it was ‘KEEN – YAH’. I was soon part of his banter.

By the time I met David was already well established as a dirty old man. This was a magnificent accomplishment by the age of 46. Fr Johnson was a paragon of vice. I could not believe my hear when I heard a priest complete with a dog collar spewing out sexual jokes. In the corridor of the Union I was speaking to him and the Laird of Camster. David said something about ‘grabbing his balls’ and then moved towards to me making a grabbing gesture but deliberately not touching my chaste loins. I backed off hastily. ‘Don’t back away from me!’ he chided. The Laird was in hysterics and said to Fr Johnson ‘well you are the one raving about grabbing people’s balls.’

The reverend father struck me as being like a bitchy version of Kenneth Williams. David was a comedian more than a priest. Much of his mirth was autoparodic. How much of this was consciously so?

Before long David was my confessor. I thought it meet to have a confessor more depraved than myself. He affected to take this duty seriously. It came across to me that he was playing a part. It was as though being a priest was a theatrical role for him. He did not come across as genuine. But he gave it his best shot. I got my iniquities off my chest. He would say, ‘God with all his universe to worry about does not care about a silly little thing like masturbation. But you have to make up with your parents.’ Fr Johnson was not sedulous about his sacerdotal duties. In fact, he was deeply unserious but I shall say this for him: he never betrayed the seal of the confessional. I give him his due! This was quite an achievement for a drunken fart. He joked that he had to bite on a lemon to stop himself chortling at my confession. At the end of the sacrament he would always say, ”and pray for me a sinner also.” At least he admitted that he was iniquitous too. I never knew him to offer any orisons.

David swore by the Daily Torygraph. He was always to be seen carrying a carefully folded copy.  I daresay he read it a good deal more than the Bible. In fact, I hardly ever heard him allude to Bible. Nor did he know a great deal about politics. He had gone into the Church for worldly and even fleshly reasons. When I once dared broach a religious issue he scorned me, ”There is always a religious nut, isn’t there?” provoking gales of laughter from all around.

Despite consuming copious pints of porter, he was not portly. He ate sparsely and walked everywhere. Moreover, David was more than partial to one of Ireland’s most splendid inventions: whiskey. It is odd that as he had such a taste for Liffey Water he never went to Ireland. He had a drop of the crature every morn.

Around that time David spoke of his aspiration to be elected to Parliament. He said he would do it either as a Tory or Monster Raving Loony. Was there a difference? It was typical of his buffoonery.

David was quintessentially British. I never heard of him ever going abroad. He was a monoglot and to some extent a xenophobe. From 1995 he seldom left the Thames Valley. He was an unabashed Islamophobe. He detested women wearing a veil and expressed a desire to rip it off.

When hopping into a taxi David often found it was driven by a man of Pakistani extraction. Upon learning the cabbie was from Pakistan, David would boast of his friendship with Benazir Bhutto. Pakistani opinion on this lady was sharply divided. Half the time he would be let off his fare; the other half he would be told to get out immediately.

His finances stretched to hiring the Lady Ethel a boat on the Thames for a birthday party cruise in 1999. I do not recall what the occasion was. Perhaps it was his birthday as it was early December.

David haunted various pubs. His antics got him banned from many places. He was a staple of gossip columns in newspapers like the Oxford Student and Cherwell. He also appeared on the Oxford Channel with Will Goodhand.

The vicar was in demand as an after-dinner speaker. He told me he was paid four figure sums. That is 20 years ago, and it was all in cash. There was no nonsense with the taxman. But despite being flush he was not flashing his cash. He never showed a modicum of liberality to the rest of us. I never remember him buying anyone a drink much less giving an ob to the needy.

Fr David often alienated people. A young artist befriended him and helped him out. Fr Johnson then put it around that he had bedded this youth. The young man in question too umbrage at this and cut David off.

David’s badinage was not everyone’s cup of tea. Some found him profoundly unfunny. His egocentricity was  wearisome and exceedingly self-indulgent – so many people felt. Many clergy believed that he was the worst possible advertisement for the Church. Indeed some regarded him as rebarbative. Being a bugger and a beggar for the bottle did not endear him to the more serious-minded clergy. By the Noughties David was not exactly the image that the C of E wanted to project.

Evangelicals were a favourite target of David’s. He liked to tell a joke about evangelicals praying over a man with one short leg, rubbing the leg ”and do you know: it grew!”. Then the evangelicals say, ”there was a woman with one arm shorter than the other. We prayed over that arm and we rubbed that arm. And do you know? It grew!”. David then told them about a man with a short penis. ”We prayed over that penis and we rubbed that penis and you know? it grew!”

In the mid-1990s David was close to a young heroin addict named Mungo. David claimed that his relationship with Mungo was paternal. If that was his idea of paternalism, then it is a mercy that David never had children. In making David childless the Good Lord knew what he was doing. Mungo was rumoured to be mainlining his heroin and sharing needles. If so an anal relationship with Mungo might not have been conducive to longevity. David’s outrageous alcoholism had surely rendered him impotent many years before. But perhaps he was a catimite.

One of the only times I knew him to be avuncular is when in 2000 a certain Etonian classicist fresher had got himself blind drunk and gatecrashed an event at the Union where he loudly offended all present. David pushed the boy into the office next day with the sage advice ”go and say sorry.” If even David had to tell you off about you high jinks then you really had overstepped the bounds of propriety. David’s raillery got him into trouble too.

David smoked a pipe. His lighter was in the shape of a naked male torso. He said it was modelled on a classicist from LMH.

On Valentine’s Day 2000 I made some quip to him about love letters. That evening I looked in my pigeonhole in my college. There were several gay valentines there. They were male nudes. I wonder who sent them?

The old rapscallion was irremediably homosexual. On one occasion I was in the Union Bar with him. At the far end were two tables. One one table sat three boys all aged about 21. On another table sat three chicks all aged about 18. I confided in the reverend father ”I would do all three of em.” He looked around and immediately started leering at the boys. I knew of only two undergraduates whom Jono bedded.

In 2002 Fr Johnson organised a mini-Glyndebourne at the Union. This opera fest as the damp squib to end all damp squibs. Half a dozen people attended. This did not seem to faze Fr Johnson who sat in the president’s chair sporting a tricorn hat and grinning ear to ear.

In 2002 Anne Widdecombe addressed the Union. Her speech was chaired by the President of OUCA: Edmund Sutton. David asked a question of Miss Widdecombe. A propos of nothing the scoundrel made a remark about Sutton who was half Cypriot, ”He looks like he is here selling cheap olives.” This crude racial slur fell flat.

David started to openly express withering contempt for the Church of England. When the Laird voiced an interest and seeking ordination David disabused him of the notion that it was a suitable vocation for a man of gifts; ”You can do joined up handwriting? Then you are a dangerous intellectual.”

Dress sense

He always cut a dash around Oxford. He wore old style clericals including a hat. These would be a biretta, a soutane, a black fedora or a shovel hat. What a curious taste in headgear he had.  What a fashion statement it was!

Fr Johnson’s daily rig consisted of flyless pantaloons (often breeches), a double waisted waistcoat (ronounced ‘hes cut), and a frock coat. . One some occasions he completed the ensemble with a silken cincture in a modest sable hue. He often sported a cape but forewent tasells.  His biretta did not include a pompon. That was self-effacing of him.

David sometimes wore a striped blazer and boater. It was Selwyn summer dress as he said. He wore this at Selwyn in the summer – only in that sense was it Selwyn summer dress.

Father Johnson was often to be seen in a stalking cape and buckled shoes striding with all the celerity his little legs afforded him along the central streets of Oxford. One of his other favourite getups was a civil servant’s court dress from the 1930s. It was navy blue with gold braid. It must have cost a pretty penny.

All this posing meant that David was so often stagey in his facial expressions and gesticulations. I can remember him staring in mock accusation and pointing at people; leaving his mouth agape and letting his tongue droop in studied astonishment; bowing from the neck as he turned and almost curtseyed as be politely made a point and even putting on his ‘serious’ face to listen to confession.

David saw himself as a camp and bacchanalian Beau Brummell. He was often accoutred with an umbrella even when it was not raining. He had a confection for millinery.

When in lay dress he was often dressed up to the nines. He boasted of his Cheviot tweed suit. He was seldom without a hat. David favoured a fedora. His style was always eye catching. He almost never dressed down. He would even wear clericals whilst getting rampageously drunk.

David accused a certain artist of offering blowjobs for a Guinness. Are they worth it? I asked. I don’t know I never had one – he replied. I joked: ”Never had one? Oh you are a liar. I have seen you slurping one greedily and the froth dribbling down your chin.” He smirked sardonically.

Fr Johnson was often deliberately insulting. When a certain classicist had a horizontal encounter with an undergraduette from St Peter’s; Fr Johnson disapproved. He thought that this female was not pulchritudinous. He booked the boy an optician’s appointment! David was not afflicted by softheartedness. It was the sort of cruel practical joke that was his metier.

David was bored. He had to organise day trips to London with young men. I went to the Guards Chapel with him in 2001 for Remembrance Day. I also went with him and several others to the College of Arms.

The only time Fr Johnson showed me the least liberality was in giving me a ticket to a son et lumiere at Blenheim Palace that he did not want to attend. Next day he saw me on the phone. He demanded I ring off immediately to tell him how it was.

OUCA was something he attended regularly. He claimed to be a reciprocal member from CUCA. At OUCA dinner he said grace. Despite that he was put on the naughty table with myself and an obese Yorkshireman: as far away from the guest of honour as possible. We were the disreputable ones. At OUCA meetings he would preface each question to a Tory MP with ‘In my local pub in a slum area of East Oxford…’ before offering his homespun wisdom. His insight was that working class Britons agreed with the Conservatives on most issues but voted Labour because they believed that Labour was on the side of the working man.

The other activity he liked was beagling. It appealed to his aristocratic pretensions. He took care to say ‘hounds’ not dogs. When out with the Christ Church hounds he wore a flat cap and tweed plus fours.

One Oxford undergraduate publication said that he had been unfrocked. He threatened to issue a writ for libel. The newspaper in question issued a grovelling apology entitled ‘Without Prejudice’ accepting that he was a priest in good standing with the Church of England and with the specific permission of the lord bishop to conduct worship. In fact, the vicar had been the one to disseminate the bogus trope that he had been defrocked.

The Oxford Student and the Cherwell often covered his japes.  These are the newspapers of Oxford University. The late Eddie Tomlinson profiled the vicar.

I attended some worship led by him. He did not get to do this often. This was perhaps the only occasion on which he was neither drunk nor suffering from withdrawal symptoms. He cannot be said to have been sedulous with regard to his sacerdotal duties.

In 2000 he broke his leg. He attended Royal Ascot by wheelchair. I was his wheelchair attendant. He did not get many miles to the pint. From the Union we had to stop at two pubs en route the station. He took a hip flask to fortify himself with whisky on the way. The man’s taste for strong water was incredible.

After a day’s drinking at Ascot we came home at midnight. What did he want to do? Go to the pub. He was a true bacchant.

His house at Seaview Cottage was a mess.  The place was packed with furniture and books. Fr Johnson claimed to be an excellent cook but I never met anyone who had any evidence of this. He claimed ”as a celibate priests I was most discombobulated on one occasion to be awoken in the wee hours by an Irish burglar once berated me in an Irish accent for, ”living in a fockin’ tip.” ” As with so many droll tales by David it was probably not entirely factual.

One of his favourite impressions was of Princess Margaret. She would be admonished by the Queen for her uncouth hat. David would then play the princess, ”You look after your kingdom”, tips ash off imaginary ciggie, ”and I’ll look after my fucking hat.” All Princess Margaret impressions included tipping the ash off before the punchline.

Another Davidism: Prince Philip is at lunch with Lord Jenkins. Lord Jenkins stood to give a speech. He delivered it with trademark aplomb, grace and articulacy. It dawns on the prince’s staff that as Jenkins is Chancellor of Oxford University then the prince will have to reply on behalf of Cambridge. For his oration the prince stands up and simply says ”Why do South African telephonists wear condoms on their ears? Because they don’t want hearing AIDS.” After three seconds of deathly silenced the room is filled with forced courtly laughter.

David liked Guinness extra cold. He seldom ate. This is the sign of a true alkie. He was the piss artiste to end all piss artistes! With Fr Johnson it was always a liquid lunch. Doubtless he consumed fortified communion wine by the gallon. A pity for him that he missed the wedding at Cana.

Despite drinking porter, he was not portly. He ate precious little and walked everywhere.

David was a zealous Freemason. He was very much on the square! Was it the dressing up, the flummery or the sense of exclusivity that appealed to him?  Here was an Anglican who wore a biretta half a century after it went out of fashion in the Universal Church. Perhaps one of the reasons he never crossed the Tiber is that the RC Church does not allow its adherent to be Masons. I spoke to him in Masonic language, ”For the sake of a Mother’s son, Jah Baal On or should I say the Great Architect of the Universe wants you to give me a square deal.” He chided me, ”you know too much.”

On the runup to my 21st I mentioned that I would be having a party. David scoffed, ”that could be held in a phone box.”

Reverend Father attended consultative committee religiously. He went to that more than church. He only set foot in church if he was leading worship. The lack of a pulpit frustrated him. On one occasion he gave a speech in an emergency debate in the lead up to Remembrance Sunday. He remarked how George V had opposed the interment of the Unknown Soldier in the aisle of Westminster Abbey because it obstructed the processional route. David knew this since he worked there a lot. When he sat down, he remarked to me that this speech was to have been his sermon for Remembrance Sunday but he had no church to preach in.

He was a member of the Oxford and Cambridge Club. He liked to go on excursions to London and take boys with him. The rapscallion had many tricks up his sleeve.

Jono hated being alone. At home he had only the bottle for company.  Every day was bacchanalia for David.

I recall the first time in the Trinity of 2000 that I met Fr Johnson. It was outside the King’s Arms. He greeted me with ”lazy dons” and held up a copy of a newspaper. The fellows of All Souls were supposed to engage in the mallard hunt at the first Easter of every century. It relates to a legend dating back to All Souls foundation in 1453 when a mallard duck supposedly flew into the drain. The dons are supposed to look for it.

If I ever wore shorts and the vicar saw me, he would excoriate me, ”There is nothing so ridiculous as an Englishman in shorts.” It was at that point that I was obliged to remind him that I am Hibernian.

In 2000 his father died at the age of 86. David reacted with complete indifference. When he told me his father had died I commisserated with him at this bereavement. The mountebank told me dismissively, ”My father and I were never close anyway.” He was always begging his mother for money after that.

Fr Johnson was forever cadging money off his aged mother. He commented that although his mother had been a Liberal she had changed. She is the Toriest of them all now – he commented. She was inflexibly opposed to adopting the Euro. She said, ‘’I am keeping the Queens head on my coins thank you very much.’’

Ventures

Unsentimentality was his style. The only thing that ever got him choked up with emotion was the monarchy. He would speak about Her Majesty the Queen with a lump in the throat. By curious contrast death even of undergraduates was reported by him without a catch in the voice.

His reverence had no affection for children. He did not care a hoot for his nieces. Not for him ”suffer the little children to come unto me.” For him little children were insufferable.

David claimed to be writing a novel about a young Guards officer at Cambridge in the 70s. This youth had a VC for saving someone from a bomb in Northern Ireland. In the story the officer has a gay affair with his valet and is blackmailed. He ends up committing suicide.

David like his life as an unapologetic alcohol. He was also unabashed about his 100% homosexuality. There were some for whom he was a pub bore and exasperating exhibitionist. He was once a cult figure for me. But after several years the joke started to wear off. I had heard all his anecdotes many times over. I began to grow increasingly uncomfortable with his racially themed shtick. Was this really just a drollery? Or perhaps this humourist really was racialist.

There was some literary talent in dear old David. He composed a droll ditty about a certain President of the Oxford Union wanking on the Oxford tube after a trip to Stringfellow’s. The victim of his poem was not that much of a scallywag. I dearly wish I could have a copy of that comic poem.

David had the unique privilege of being chaplain of Stringfellow’s.  That is the UK’s premier lap dancing club. It might seem odd. He did not engage in blessing of the breasts.

On one occasion he led me and several others into Stringfellow’s. It was a gynaecological education! These girls were holding themselves open inches from the boys’ faces. One of the most hilarious things I ever saw is Mark enjoying a lap dance. I believe that is what turned him gay.

At Stringfellow’s we called him father. ‘Shut up don’t you know the press are onto me’ he chided me. I then pretended to the whores that he was my father. The nude dancer said, ‘you must look more like mum.’

Fr Johnson never evinced the remotest attraction to even the comeliest female. He regarded heterosexuality as an incomprehensible, abominable and unforgivable vice. It was odd that he did not like women even socially. He was like a bored housewife him with his nattering. He was an inveterate gossip.

David was certainly far from politically correct. Fr Johnson called me a bog trotter – and he liked me! He did not hesitate to ask people who had been to India, ”how is the empire?”  Some of his epithets would have you choking on your chai. He referred to Neil Mahapatra as chapati. On another occasion he told an undergraduate of South Asian ancestry ‘fuck off back home to Pakiland you filthy brown wog.’ Passing the erstwhile India Office he remarked to me ‘from there a hundred civil servants ruled four hundred million darkies when the wogs knew their place.’ On another occasion he met an British Indian Oxford graduate who had made a million in banking in only a few years. David greeted him with, ”I hear the corner shop is doing rather well.”

When in Singapore I sent him a postcard I found of a British tank crushing a Japanese soldier with a caption which was a Churchill quotation: ‘Great Britain shall continue the war against Japan until the very end.’ It pleased him immensely. He was Japonophobic. He did not hesitate to call them Nips in a decidedly unchristian tone. David went misty eyed when describing how an officer of the Rajputana Rifles had taken the surrender of thousands of Japanese.

Once he asked me to bring him to chapel in my college. He appeared in a cloud of pipesmoke. He was in academic gowns complete with mortarboard. We went to chapel. When it came to the donations he put something in the offering plate. I caught the guilty grin on his face. I immediately snatched the banknote out. I looked and saw in place of the Queen’s face there was a topless girl. It was a gratuity banknote from Stringfellow’s. My chaplain later asked me ”Was that the Union priest?” David’s infamy had preceded him. Fr Johnson was disgusted that people were allowed to attend formal hall in casuals and I was not plying him with enough booze. He walked out in high dudgeon! He later sent me a handwritten apology.

David was exceptionally fortunate. He had been an undergraduate when there were no fees and there were grants for all. He was allowed into one of the most respected professions despite his disgraceful misconduct. David benefited from the exceptional liberality of the Church. He ponced off friends. But David was a total ingrate. He never voiced appreciation for his elderly widowed mother bailing him out financially when he was in his late 40s. David rarely visited her. He was utterly shameless about exploiting an octagenarian widow. This freeloader did not show the generosity to others in the pecuniary sense or any other that he demanded for himself.

The vicar was friends with another clergyman of his own vintage. This morbidly obese chap strove to be respectable but was handsy. David would crack crude jokes. His chum would giggle girlishly and chide David for his naughtiness. The other priest fought the good fight against his own lust.

By 2003 things were going wrong for him even as a pensioner. He was getting bored of Oxford and Oxford was getting bored of him. He showed up at the Oxford Union on 5 December and announced it was his 50th birthday. Few have closed half a century of life with more wasted opportunities to their name. He had no party and precious little to celebrate.

In 2004 David organised an event for the 60th anniversary of D Day. It was in a pub called the Far from the Madding Crowd. The Luxembourgish ambassador came. David said this man was straight from central casting. The Canadian High Commissioner also attended. It was a very low key event without orations. The Canadian High Commissioner must have been underwhelmed by such a casual event despite everyone being dressed up. He was in a tailsuit. At this event I chatted to Neil Hamilton who was a pal of David’s since Cambridge. David said that the Hamiltons did not wish to be a circus act which they had been in the late 90s as he was himself. The former Tory MP Neil Hamilton had been a dear friend of David’s since Cambridge.

Decline

Sometimes I would see him in the Union Bar first thing in the morning. He would have vomit encrusted on his shirt. David would reek of perspiration and be shaking uncontrollably. His fingernails would be clogged with filth. Clearly irritable he would be speaking 19 to the dozen. I realised it was delirium tremens. He was having withdrawal symptoms from having a dangerously high level of blood in his alcohol stream. He was the alcoholic’s alcoholic. You cannot be an epicurean that long without it catching up with you. This disciple of Dionysus never wavered in his faith.

I decided to exact vengeance on David. I called him up posing as a police sergeant telling him to come to the station to be interviewed on suspicion of inciting racial hatred. When I quoted some of his racist outbursts he said ”I never use language of that kind” but agreed to come to the station.

On another occasion a certain Nigerian bishop named Methusaleh Akintunde called David and said he remembered David fondly from his time at Church House. Bishop Methusaleh suggested David come to Nigeria for a handsomely remunerated post leading the crusade against the sin of Sodom. David did not protest. He was assured ”there is a vast amount of money to be made in service of the Lord!” The bishop asked David how many children he had. The Nigerian was flummoxed to learnt that David had not taken to wife. ‘Does not the good book say be fruitful and multiply?’ Told that David had not spawned he asked if David’s goodwife was barren. The Nigerian prelate suggested meeting for tea at the Randolph Hotel. David was willing to meet but only if the bishop picked up the tab. The good prelate agreed to do so.  The bishop turned out to be yours truly.

I phone David up pretending to be Rowan Williams. It being lunchtime he was of coursed in a licensed establishment. David boastfully called out to his interlocutors, ”Be quiet a moment. I have got the Archbishop of Canterbury on the phone.” I then proceeded to tell him I was dissatisfied with Richard Harries and would like to ask David to take over as Lord Bishop. Tempting though it was to believe even David was not going to fall for that one. ”Ha bloody ha!” he expectorated.

By the late noughties, life was beginning to pall for David. The barfly had been banned from most bears. His decades of alcoholic abuse on a titanic scale had begun to catch up with him. The old magic was vanishing. He felt increasingly alienated from the Church of England. It seemed to want clergy to be left wing social workers. That was never his style.

When I was at Ampleforth I received a handwritten letter from the vicar. He hoped I was not kept awake by black marias wailing across the moors to take monks from the dormitories of the sexually abused.

In 2007 he was suffering pancreatitis. This kills in a few years. It is a miracle that he lasted 13. Of course, he might have been lying about that disease as he lied about so much else. His copious consumption of liquor had put him in this state. He did not go off the sauce.

Fr Johnson had some strokes occasioned by his horrendous overdrinking. But he did not slow down. There was little point. In view of his boozing he seemed almost immortal.

By 2013 David was very frail and had to move into a nursing home aged 59. He had grievously abused alcohol for decades. There was put on the wagon for a while. But he had nothing else to live for but booze. Unlike Churchill alcohol took more out of David than David took out of it. His life of geriatric delinquency began.

Actor though he was David was not a tragedian. He did not feel sorry for himself. He was lucky to have lasted that long. In the late 90s he had been hospitalised a few times when on death’s door from his alcohol dependency.

On 5 December 2013 he had a 60th birthday party upstairs at the Union. David was himself again. He was remarkably good at getting around on his disability vehicle or ‘invalid carriage’ as he liked to call it. The pensioner managed to get to and around London by train and cab. He drooled and stank. He expression in his voice was going.

Despite being exceptionally sociable David was in a sense not an easy man to know. Though gratingly garrulous it was hard to know the real David. He acted so much. Had he become the act? What was beneath all that bluster? He was in inebriated half the time. In moments of melancholy perhaps then I saw David as he really was – an unhappy and easily bored boy who craved recognition.

Later he went around in a disability vehicle. He drank from an adapted cup. Despite his physical debilities he as compos mentis. Drooling was the only thing he was liberal about. He began to reek. He cut a decidedly pathetic and forlorn figure. Nevertheless, it was a plaintive few years.

The reverend father vocalised his fulsome support for the English Defence League. I imagined that he might attend its rallies in clericals. But it was not to be. His vociferation against political correctness was undimmed.

David was absolutely Anglican but in no sense a Christian. There was not one tittle of Christianity goodness in him. He was very insulting and selfish.  I never recall him expressing the least iota of sympathy for anyone who was ill, unemployed, depressed, jilted or otherwise suffering. He was gratuitously offensive to people about their children and about failing exams. David was a disgrace to the cloth. It is astounding that he was ordained. He would not have been accepted nowadays. David seemed more like a disciple of the antichrist than the Nazarene.

There are those who say that David was kind. I seldom saw him do anything for someone else. He was a selfish as can be imagined. He also started to feel sorry for himself. David never felt sorry for anyone else. The last few years are hard to limn with anything other than pathos.

So much of his eccentricity was studied. Every man has his foibles. But with David it was hard to know where the posing ended and the real person began. Did I ever get to know the man under that carapace? But a deux he was the same as when on display mode. When he was down in the mouth that is perhaps as close as one got to seeing David unspun. So often he was in his cups that it was hard to find a sober baseline to compare that with.

Perhaps this son of Bacchus intended to donate his body to medical science. David took the trouble to preserve his body in alcohol. In the nursing home he was a little forlorn. After two strokes there was not much left to live for. I imagine that he mused on what might have been. Had he squandered his prodigious gifts and the numerous golden opportunities afforded him? He was spending a lugubrious few years of dotage.

I cannot help reflecting that he was blessed to be born when he did. He was totally unappreciative of his lucky timing.  Had he been born a generation earlier then university would have been financially beyond the grasp of someone as unscholarly as him. Had he been born a generation later then his outrageous antics would not have been tolerated in the Church or any other profession. He was an odd living self- contradiction: a combination of conformist and contrarian traits.

I have often wondered whether Fr Johnson had a personality disorder. It was clear that he was not entirely sane. 50 years of alcohol abuse cannot have been good for his brain. Being a dotant did nothing to improve his condition. It is a tristful tale.

David’s prodigious gifts had been squandered. It is a shame he did not go on reality TV. He was just the sort of exhibitionist freak they were looking for.

In March 2020 he was cognizant that he was near his hour of dissolution. He asked Fr Marcus Walker to administer the last rites. David received this. He will have needed absolution. He was struggling to speak or swallow. Yet the Fr Johnson was mentally unimpaired.

Through much of his life he was unrepentant. He said ”never explain, never apologise.” Did he go impenitent to his Maker?  Hypocrite, toady and inebriate – he was going to need some forgiving. If he was shriven perhaps he shall have less to answer for.

For the last few weeks of his life David drank very little water and no food. It is unclear if he was purposively starving himself. If famishment did not kill him, it is possible that dehydration did. It is the supreme irony that a man notorious for his drinking may well have died of thirst. His immune system will have been very frail. He expired at the height of the coronavirus pandemic. It is not thought that he succumbed to that disease.

On 22 April 2020 David was called to his reward. It will have been a matter of irritation to him that he did not manage to expire two days earlier: on Hitler’s birthday.

Fr Johnson was by turns; bitchy, mean-spirited, sharp tongued, entertaining, quick witted, irascible, infuriating, egotistical, perverted, disreputable, self-serving and outrageous but never, ever, ever dull. David lived his life to the full. He was bon vivant par excellence. From his louche lifestyle to his insatiable thirst to his jaw dropping candour he was unapologetically his own man. In that sense at least he is a model to us all. Though I was the target of his cruel comments this perverted popinjay enriched my life. I am very glad I knew such a unique and colourful character. He was worth 100 of those forgettably milksop priests who people the parishes. I miss the filthy old bastard. The decrepit, despicable pervert would not mind me calling him that. For him anything but mindless good taste.

Rev Johnson was a concatenation of contradictions: parsimony and profligacy; effeminacy and misogyny; traditionalism and mocking it; sociability and sociopathy; Anglo-Catholicism yet despising Anglicanism and Catholicism; craving friends but alienating those who were friendly to him; homosexuality yet eschewing sex; dressiness but sometimes looking like a tramp.

David would have been elated to have been the subject of an obituary in the Daily Telegraph, the Times as well as other broadsheets.  The Times called him ‘colourful, quixotic and mischievous.’ Coronavirus was on and there was little else in the news. The Telegraph opined, ”some saw him as an institution and others thought he should be confined to one.”  As a publicity hunter he would have considered an obit in his favourite newspaper to be Elysian. The newspaper correctly surmised that he was a clergyman the like of which the world shall never see again. The Torygraph wrote with masterful British understatement that Jono ”patronised his local pub assiduously.” He was also remembered in the Church Times: the publication he once lampooned. The Church Times commented on his ‘unquenchable taste for self-destruction.’ It also remarked ‘He could not bear to be alone’. The obituary signed off: may he now find peace.

How will we remember him? He was a model of egocentricity, insobriety, self-indulgence, and ghoulish schadenfreude. To some he was a hobgoblin of spite, hypocrisy and bigotry. I shall remember him carousing the pubs of Oxford and camping it up. Others will remember his moments of decency and concern for the welfare of others. In my experience these were few and far between. He was the Lord of Misrule and indeed the Queen of Vice. David was a seriously silly man.

They don’t make them like that anymore! The Almighty broke the mould once David was fashioned. David is now there in that great big pub in the sky holding forth with tart gossip, playing racism for laughs and indulging in high camp playacting. I do not know if he is wearing a silken scarlet soutane or Selwyn summer dress. But I do know that he has a Guinness extra cold in each hand!

Coronavirus necessitated a burial with only a handful of mourners. He was laid to rest in Cogenhoe his quondam Northamptonshire parish. A full memorial service is planned for a few months hence. There we shall partake of copious vinous glassfuls in memory of this devout votary of Bacchus and offer him a libation. It is what he would have wanted. What should his epitaph be? I drink therefore I am.

German unification

The Zollverein helped to unite Germany. This forged a sense of economic unity.

The Prussian Finance Minister, Count von Bulow, had the idea for the Zollverein. There was a customs union in 1818 in Prussia. Prior to that there had been tariffs within Prussia.

The Zollverein reduced tariff barriers and protectionism. Raw materials and manufactures became cheaper and more easily available.

It became cheaper to buy, sell and transport goods.

The Rhineland, the Saar and the Ruhr valleys became centres of industrial growth.

The inland states joined Zollverein sooner. That was because coastal states: they could trade by sea. They traded with other countries more than within Germany.

By 1836 all states south of Prussia had joined Zollverein except Austria.

Coastal states had tariff free access to international commerce. They did not wish to burder consumers and producers with import taxes. They would have to pay these if they were in the Zollverein.

Hanover had a steuerverein – tax union – in 1834 with Brunswick. Oldenburg then joined. External tariffs on incomplete goods and overseas raw materials were under the rates of the Zollverein.

Brunswick joined the Zollverein in 1842. Hanover and Oldenburg in 1854.

In 1866 Schlwesig, Holstein and Lauenburg were absorbed into Prussia.

Transport

In the early 19th century the roads were in a parlous state. People said the roads were terrible. They had been kept in decent condition in the Napoleonic Wars so the army could use them.

After the 1820s road improvements began. Prussia increased its hard road surfaces from 3 400 km to 16 600 km by 1852.

Heinrich von Gagern said that the roads were ”the veins and arteries of the body politic.”

Travel meant people came into contact with other Germans. This stimulated trade. People met at inns, restaurants, markets and stations. Symposia and conferences became more common. It became easier to have musicians, actors and writers travel.

Baden Baden became more important as a spa. Water transport ameliorated. There had been blockades on the Rhine. These were removed under Napoleon.

By the 1820s steam engines were on the rivers. Previously there had been barges. Men and horses had towed boats.

In 1846 there were over 180 paddle steamers on German rivers and lakes.

Canals were built in the 19th century. These linked to the rivers Danube, Weser and Elbe.

Some boats had to unload goods so they could be taxed, reload the goods and then unload against a few kilometres down the river to be taxed again. This was very time consuming. The Zollverein put an end to this.

The railway was vital. The train was invented in 1835 in the UK.

The German economist Friedrich List said that railways and thw Zollverein were Siamese twins,.

August Heinrich Hoffmann von Fallersleben composed a poem extolling the Zollverein.

The poet said that commodities had done more to build German unity than politics or diplomacy.

Some said that railways made the stated united.

The novelist Wilhelm Raabe wrote, ”the German empire was founded by the construction of the railway.”

Not everybody liked trains. They ruined coachmen. Some people were Luddites. Some said that trains were noisy, filthy, dangerous and unnatural. Some called trains ”iron monsters”.

King Frederick William III of Prussia said that there was no point in taking the train even though it was faster than a coach.

Prince Metternich (the Austrian Chancellor) said he would never take the train.

Nikolaus Lenau wrote a poem in 1838 called Tp Spring. In it he said that railways had ruined the placidity of the wilderness.

The Bavarian Ludwig Railway was the first railway in Germany. It was built between Nuremberg and Furth in 1835. It ws 6 km long and rain only in daytime. It was a hit. It expanded to 144 km within 3 years.

By 1840 there were 141 km of track.

by 1860 there were 11 000 km of track.

The railways were in webs. There was no capital of Germany so interconnectedness was limited. Railways served regions rather than the whole country.

Rail made it cheaper to transport goods and people. It also helped forged national unity despite the shortcomings of the unco-ordinated system.

Timetables meant that Germany had to all have the same time. Previously town clocks were set by the sun.

The cost of transporting a ton by rail fell from 18 pfennigs in 1840 to 5 in 1870.

Ran materials could travel faster. Transport was no longer stopped by flooded or frozen rivers.

There was a new demand for wood and coal. Commodities were transported faster and more affordably.

In 1850 inland shipping transported 3 times more freight than railways. By 1870 it was the other way around.

Cities were rebuilt to accommodate railways.

By the 1890s the railways had reached every market town in the country.

GEOGRAPHY, PATRIOTISM AND LANGUAGE

Travel became quicker.

The Borthers Grimm wrote their dictionary known as the Grimm. It compiled oral literature. They noted that many of the same stories existed throughout Germany but were told in different versions.

Karl Baedeker wrote guide books to German and foreign cities. He wrote a history and description of all notable buildings. He also provided transport and accommodation info.

Hoffman von Fallersleben said that geography mattered as much as language. He wrote the Song of the Germans which became the national anthem. He wanted everyone to unite.

Watch on the Rhine was another famous nationalistic song. It cites German characteristics. He disputed France’s claim that the Rhine was France’s eastern boundary.

Nickolaus Becker wrote the Rhine Song saying that Germans must defend Germany.

People had their identity formed by the landscape, ancient castles and historic places.

THE VORMARZ

Austria and Prussia were police states. They censored a lot.

The period before 1848 was later called the pre-March.

Nationalism and liberalism began to spread. Nationalists usually wanted unification on a liberal basis – with greater rights. They wanted German unity because most people wanted it. They believed in giving people what they want.

Liberals wanted elected legislatures. They wanted votes for the upper class and middle class.

HAMBACH FESTIVAL

iN 1832 a festival was held in the ruins of Hambach Castle. 32 000 Nationalists students and intellectuals paraded there. Women attended as well as men. They bore aloft a banner which later became the German Flag. They formed the Burschenschaft – a nationalist secret organisation.

Popular sovereignty is the notion that ordinary people have the right to decide the future of the nation such as whether Germany should unite or not. The notion of unity was fairly popular.

Hambach was presented as a fair. Those who took part promoted fraternity, liberty and unity. They gathered in the Bavarian town of Hambach. There were musical events and a march. There were orations by nationalist thinkers. Some were radical, some liberal and a few conservative.

The German nationalist wanted to educate their people. Literacy in Germany was high. But Germans needed to be taught to think of themselves as German first and foremost.

The authorities were suspicious. To them Hambach smacked of France 1789. France had had another revolution in 1830. Therefore, hereditary rulers were jittery. Despite the presence of a few conservatives at Hambach, the preponderance of conservatives were hostile to the festival and its goals. Conservatives tended to emphasise state identity. They were negative about major changes.

At Hambach, speakers underscored that German unity was to be accomplished peacefully. They wanted a union of hearts and minds before political union was perfected.

Austria was the arch-conservative force in Germany. Vienna felt menaced by nationalism. It could lead to the breakup of the empire and the downfall of the monarchy.

The Chancellor of Austria, Metternich, was perturbed by Hambach. Prince Clemens von Metternich was a reactionary. Although he was Austrian Chancellor he was from the Rhineland. That did not make him sympathetic to German nationalism though. He used Hambach as a justification for the Six Articles: these were proclamations about the inviolability of the monarchy, the integrity of the Austrian Empire, the privileged position of the Catholic Church and so forth.

In July 1832 the Diet at Frankfurt voted for another 10 articles. These repeated that censorship would be exercised on publications or public speeches that caused disharmonious relations. The rules limiting political organisations were also reaffirmed. The states said that they would dispatch soldiers to any state that faced an insurrection.

Prince Wrede commanded half the Bavarian Army in marching to the Palatinate. He wanted to dissuade people there from any demonstrations. Some of those who had orated at Hambach were arrested. They were charged with sedition. One speaker, Heinrich Bruggemann, was sentenced to death. His sentence was commuted to life imprisonment but released several years later. Several others received lenghty terms of incarceration.

LIBERALISM AND ECONOMIC PROBLEMS

The Carlsbad Decrees deprived people of free expression were ridiculed by liberals.

There were a multitude of factors concerning nationalism. There were asperities between the states in the German Confederation. Austria and Prussia had fought against each other many times. Austria had often been an all of France. if there was to be a united Germany who was to lead it? Would it be Germany or Austria? Could both be accommodated? The idea of having both in Germany was called Grossdeustchland.

There was business competition between the states. Industry and agricultures viewed each other as almost enemies. Cottage industries disliked factories. Handicrafts were going out of business because they could not compete with the low costs and standardisation of manufactured goods.

The Zollverein created losers as well as winners. Some people went bankrupt due to it. Taxes on incomes had to rise as import taxes were scrapped.

Landowners felt threatened by the new found wealth of factory owners and the mercantile class.

There was drought in the 1830s. This caused serious hardship.

In 1840 potato blight struck Germany.

There was considerable internal migration. As agriculture became more efficient and it needed fewer workers. Countryside people moved to cities where they found jobs in factories, coal mines, railways and the service sector.

The countryside and the city were not separate from each other. City dwellers often returned to their birth villages in the countryside on the weekend.

Governments were disturbed by growing discontent. They believed that seditionists were making people unhappy. Government feared a revolution.

Agitators were punished with fines and prison terms. Sometimes they were exiled to other states.

The intelligentisa was ever more alienated from the status quo. Undergraduates, professors, teachers, lawyers, architects, doctors, engineers, accountants and sometimes even clergy were becoming dissatisfied with the authoritarian nature of most German states. The highly educated people travelled the country the most and corresponded with each other. They had often studied in states other than their own. The intelligentsia had a more pronounced German identity than any other class.

Businessmen tended to travel to. Some of them were starting to have a distinct German identity and perceive the benefits that a united Germany would bring in its train.

Some of the aristocracy was attracted to German nationalism. They too had the time and money to travel. However, most of them saw the perils attendant on unification. It could be accompanied by revolution and that would threaten the position of the aristocracy. What would Poles in East Prussia say? They would wanted a united and independent Poland if there was a united and independent Germany.

ATTEMPTS AT UNIFICATION

In 1817 there had been the Wartburg rally in 1817. This had been the first public call for unification. It has prefigured Hambach.

At Hamback the varying views of the speakers had proved that there was no coherent nationalist movement. Nationalists had very different visions of a united Germany. They disagreed sharply on how to achieve a united Germany. They placed their faith in educating or indoctrinating the common people into nationalism. This was condescending. Some highly educated people were totally opposed to nationalism.

High flown rhetoric achieved little. Flaunting flags was no substitues for action nor was a banquet for nationalist windbags. Some proposed writing a German Constitution. But before 1848 no one did it.

1848 – THE YEAR OF REVOLUTIONS

In February 1848 a revolution broke out in Paris. King Louis Philippe was overthrown. That was the end of the Orleanist dynasty in France.

In Vienna, Prince Metternich was aghast. He opposed any upset to the Congress of Vienna settlement that he had painstakingly set up in the wake of the Napoleonic Wars. Metternich saw Austria as the policeman of Europe. He therefore decided that military action was needed to quell the French Revolution and put the King of the French back on his throne. If revolution was not nipped in the bud then it would spread – that was Metternich’s reasoning.

In Austria taxes were raised to fund a war. Austria called on other states in Europe to join the counter revolutionary cause. Austrians were horrified that they were going to be taxed more. It also seemed like another unnecessary war against France. Austria had had over 20 years of those at enormous cost. Many people went to the banks to withdraw all their money. They feared that the government would simply confiscate money from banks as a way of taxing people.

Queues at banks turned into rowdy demonstrations. The situation grew so alarming that the Hasburgs fled to Innsbruck. Crowds demanded that Metternich be sacked. The emperor dismissed Metternich. He then moved to London.

The revolution spread to Hungary, Ireland, Venezuela, Poland and other countries.

The Frankfurt Parliament met at St Paul’s Church. They decided that a proper national parliament needed to be elected. Radicals wanted every man to be able to vote. Liberals wanted educational and property qualifications in order to vote.

The German Revolution was intended to bring about unification and a constitution. Revolutionaries were not that revolutionary at first. They petitioned the states to allow an elected assembly for the whole of Germany. The revolutionaries thought that relatively liberal states in the Rhineland might agree.

Some revolutionaries thought that the King of Prussia ought to be the German head of state. It stood to reason. Prussia was the largest mainly German state. Prussia had done more to beat France than any other state. Prussia was not as hostile to German nationalism as Austria was.

There was some debate just how integrated a united Germany should be. How much autonomy should states retain.

Prussia had a three class voting system. Those who paid a third of the tax elected a third of the deputies to the landtag (parliament). The richest 5% therefore had 33% of the representation. The next richest 20% had a third and the rest had another third. Every man in Prussia could vote but not on an equal basis.

For the first time German nationalism spread out of the upper middle class. Significant numbers of working class people became excited by the idea of unification. It was a very dangerous moment for reactionaries.

In March 1849 the Frankfurt Parliament passed the Constitution. It offered the emperorship of Germany to Frederick William IV. The King of Prussia declined scornfully. He would only accept such an offer from the heads of states. Prussia knew that if its king had accepted the crown from the Frankfurt Parliament the other states including Austria would have declared war. Even Russia might have stepped in. A united Germany would be too mighty; It would be perceive as an existential threat by its neighbours.

The Frankfurt Parliament proposed kleindeutschland – i.e. Germany excluding Austria. This disappointed many. Some Austrians were German nationalists. Though the Austrian Government was adamantine in its opposition to nationalism not all Austrians were against it.

Some German states were amenable to unification. They negotiated with the Frankfurt Parliament. A few even encouraged it. This was a mixture of genuine conviction and a belief that unification was happening anyway so it was wise to be on the winning side.

The defeat of all the other revolutions (except the French one) demoralised the Frankfurt Parliament.

ANALYSIS OF FRANKFURT

Liberals in Frankfurt failed to accomplish nationalism their way. Therefore it fell to conservatives to do it their way. That is one viewpoint. The liberals had also made perhaps too many concession to land owners.

Germany is said to have followed the sonderweg (separate path) in its historical development after 1848.

People say that the failure of 1848 led to Germany being an authoritarian satte when it eventually united. Some said this ultimately led to Nazism.

Some German bourgeois wanted to be upper class. The failure of 1848 was largely a middle class failure. They began to believe that only the upper class could accomplished what the middle class could not.

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More recent scholarship has rejected this idea, claiming that Germany did not have an actual “distinctive path” any more than any other nation, a historiographic idea known as exceptionalism.[52] Instead, modern historians claim 1848 saw specific achievements by the liberal politicians. Many of their ideas and programs were later incorporated into Bismarck’s social programs (e.g., social insurance, education programs, and wider definitions of suffrage). In addition, the notion of a distinctive path relies upon the underlying assumption that some other nation’s path (in this case, the United Kingdom’s) is the accepted norm.[53] This new argument further challenges the norms of the British-centric model of development: studies of national development in Britain and other “normal” states (e.g., France or the United States) have suggested that even in these cases, the modern nation-state did not develop evenly. Nor did it develop particularly early, being rather a largely mid-to-late-19th-century phenomenon.[54] Since the end of the 1990s, this view has become widely accepted, although some historians still find the Sonderweg analysis helpful in understanding the period of National Socialism.[55][56]

Problem of spheres of influence: The Erfurt Union and the Punctation of Olmütz[edit]

This depiction of Germania, also by Philipp Veit, was created to hide the organ of the Paul’s Church in Frankfurt, during the meeting of the Parliament there, March 1848–49. The sword was intended to symbolize the Word of God and to mark the renewal of the people and their triumphant spirit.

After the Frankfurt Parliament disbanded, Frederick William IV, under the influence of General Joseph Maria von Radowitz, supported the establishment of the Erfurt Union—a federation of German states, excluding Austria—by the free agreement of the German princes. This limited union under Prussia would have almost entirely eliminated Austrian influence on the other German states. Combined diplomatic pressure from Austria and Russia (a guarantor of the 1815 agreements that established European spheres of influence) forced Prussia to relinquish the idea of the Erfurt Union at a meeting in the small town of Olmütz in Moravia. In November 1850, the Prussians—specifically Radowitz and Frederick William—agreed to the restoration of the German Confederation under Austrian leadership. This became known as the Punctation of Olmütz, but among Prussians it was known as the “Humiliation of Olmütz.”[57]

Although seemingly minor events, the Erfurt Union proposal and the Punctation of Olmütz brought the problems of influence in the German states into sharp focus. The question became not a matter of if but rather when unification would occur, and when was contingent upon strength. One of the former Frankfurt Parliament members, Johann Gustav Droysen, summed up the problem:

We cannot conceal the fact that the whole German question is a simple alternative between Prussia and Austria. In these states, German life has its positive and negative poles—in the former, all the interests [that] are national and reformative, in the latter, all that are dynastic and destructive. The German question is not a constitutional question but a question of power; and the Prussian monarchy is now wholly German, while that of Austria cannot be.[58]

Unification under these conditions raised a basic diplomatic problem. The possibility of German (or Italian) unification would overturn the overlapping spheres of influence system created in 1815 at the Congress of Vienna. The principal architects of this convention, Metternich, Castlereagh, and Tsar Alexander (with his foreign secretary Count Karl Nesselrode), had conceived of and organized a Europe balanced and guaranteed by four “great powers“: Great Britain, France, Russia, and Austria, with each power having a geographic sphere of influence. France’s sphere included the Iberian Peninsula and a share of influence in the Italian states. Russia’s included the eastern regions of Central Europe and a balancing influence in the Balkans. Austria’s sphere expanded throughout much of the Central European territories formerly held by the Holy Roman Empire. Britain’s sphere was the rest of the world, especially the seas.[59]

This sphere of influence system depended upon the fragmentation of the German and Italian states, not their consolidation. Consequently, a German nation united under one banner presented significant questions. There was no readily applicable definition for who the German people would be or how far the borders of a German nation would stretch. There was also uncertainty as to who would best lead and defend “Germany”, however it was defined. Different groups offered different solutions to this problem. In the Kleindeutschland (“Lesser Germany”) solution, the German states would be united under the leadership of the Prussian Hohenzollerns; in the Grossdeutschland (“Greater Germany”) solution, the German states would be united under the leadership of the Austrian Habsburgs. This controversy, the latest phase of the German dualism debate that had dominated the politics of the German states and Austro-Prussian diplomacy since the 1701 creation of the Kingdom of Prussia, would come to a head during the following twenty years.[60]

External expectations of a unified Germany[edit]

Other nationalists had high hopes for the German unification movement, and the frustration with lasting German unification after 1850 seemed to set the national movement back. Revolutionaries associated national unification with progress. As Giuseppe Garibaldi wrote to German revolutionary Karl Blind on 10 April 1865, “The progress of humanity seems to have come to a halt, and you with your superior intelligence will know why. The reason is that the world lacks a nation [that] possesses true leadership. Such leadership, of course, is required not to dominate other peoples but to lead them along the path of duty, to lead them toward the brotherhood of nations where all the barriers erected by egoism will be destroyed.” Garibaldi looked to Germany for the “kind of leadership [that], in the true tradition of medieval chivalry, would devote itself to redressing wrongs, supporting the weak, sacrificing momentary gains and material advantage for the much finer and more satisfying achievement of relieving the suffering of our fellow men. We need a nation courageous enough to give us a lead in this direction. It would rally to its cause all those who are suffering wrong or who aspire to a better life and all those who are now enduring foreign oppression.” [61]

German unification had also been viewed as a prerequisite for the creation of a European federation, which Giuseppe Mazzini and other European patriots had been promoting for more than three decades:

In the spring of 1834, while at Berne, Mazzini and a dozen refugees from Italy, Poland and Germany founded a new association with the grandiose name of Young Europe. Its basic, and equally grandiose idea, was that, as the French Revolution of 1789 had enlarged the concept of individual liberty, another revolution would now be needed for national liberty; and his vision went further because he hoped that in the no doubt distant future free nations might combine to form a loosely federal Europe with some kind of federal assembly to regulate their common interests. […] His intention was nothing less than to overturn the European settlement agreed [to] in 1815 by the Congress of Vienna, which had reestablished an oppressive hegemony of a few great powers and blocked the emergence of smaller nations. […] Mazzini hoped, but without much confidence, that his vision of a league or society of independent nations would be realized in his own lifetime. In practice Young Europe lacked the money and popular support for more than a short-term existence. Nevertheless he always remained faithful to the ideal of a united continent for which the creation of individual nations would be an indispensable preliminary.[62]

Prussia’s growing strength: Realpolitik[edit]

Further information: Helmuth von Moltke the Elder § Moltke’s Theory of WarThe convergence of leadership in politics and diplomacy by Bismarck, left, reorganization of the army and its training techniques by Albrecht von Roon (center), and the redesign of operational and strategic principles by Helmuth von Moltke (right) placed Prussia among the most powerful states in European affairs after the 1860s.

King Frederick William IV suffered a stroke in 1857 and could no longer rule. This led to his brother William becoming Prince Regent of the Kingdom of Prussia in 1858. Meanwhile, Helmuth von Moltke had become chief of the Prussian General Staff in 1857, and Albrecht von Roon would become Prussian Minister of War in 1859.[63] This shuffling of authority within the Prussian military establishment would have important consequences. Von Roon and William (who took an active interest in military structures) began reorganizing the Prussian army, while Moltke redesigned the strategic defense of Prussia by streamlining operational command. Prussian army reforms (especially how to pay for them) caused a constitutional crisis beginning in 1860 because both parliament and William—via his minister of war—wanted control over the military budget. William, crowned King Wilhelm I in 1861, appointed Otto von Bismarck to the position of Minister-President of Prussia in 1862. Bismarck resolved the crisis in favor of the war minister.[64]

The Crimean War of 1854–55 and the Italian War of 1859 disrupted relations among Great Britain, France, Austria, and Russia. In the aftermath of this disarray, the convergence of von Moltke’s operational redesign, von Roon and Wilhelm’s army restructure, and Bismarck’s diplomacy influenced the realignment of the European balance of power. Their combined agendas established Prussia as the leading German power through a combination of foreign diplomatic triumphs—backed up by the possible use of Prussian military might—and an internal conservatism tempered by pragmatism, which came to be known as Realpolitik.[65]

Bismarck expressed the essence of Realpolitik in his subsequently famous “Blood and Iron” speech to the Budget Committee of the Prussian Chamber of Deputies on 30 September 1862, shortly after he became Minister President: “The great questions of the time will not be resolved by speeches and majority decisions—that was the great mistake of 1848 and 1849—but by iron and blood.”[66] Bismarck’s words, “iron and blood” (or “blood and iron”, as often attributed), have often been misappropriated as evidence of a German lust for blood and power.[67] First, the phrase from his speech “the great questions of time will not be resolved by speeches and majority decisions” is often interpreted as a repudiation of the political process—a repudiation Bismarck did not himself advocate.[68] Second, his emphasis on blood and iron did not imply simply the unrivaled military might of the Prussian army but rather two important aspects: the ability of the assorted German states to produce iron and other related war materials and the willingness to use those war materials if necessary.[69]

Founding a unified state[edit]

There is, in political geography, no Germany proper to speak of. There are Kingdoms and Grand Duchies, and Duchies and Principalities, inhabited by Germans, and each [is] separately ruled by an independent sovereign with all the machinery of State. Yet there is a natural undercurrent tending to a national feeling and toward a union of the Germans into one great nation, ruled by one common head as a national unit.

—article from The New York Times published on July 1, 1866[70]

By 1862, when Bismarck made his speech, the idea of a German nation-state in the peaceful spirit of Pan-Germanism had shifted from the liberal and democratic character of 1848 to accommodate Bismarck’s more conservative Realpolitik. Bismarck sought to link a unified state to the Hohenzollern dynasty, which for some historians remains one of Bismarck’s primary contributions to the creation of the German Empire in 1871.[71] While the conditions of the treaties binding the various German states to one another prohibited Bismarck from taking unilateral action, the politician and diplomat in him realized the impracticality of this.[72] To get the German states to unify, Bismarck needed a single, outside enemy that would declare war on one of the German states first, thus providing a casus belli to rally all Germans behind. This opportunity arose with the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War in 1870. Historians have long debated Bismarck’s role in the events leading up to the war. The traditional view, promulgated in large part by late 19th- and early 20th-century pro-Prussian historians, maintains that Bismarck’s intent was always German unification. Post-1945 historians, however, see more short-term opportunism and cynicism in Bismarck’s manipulation of the circumstances to create a war, rather than a grand scheme to unify a nation-state.[73] Regardless of motivation, by manipulating events of 1866 and 1870, Bismarck demonstrated the political and diplomatic skill that had caused Wilhelm to turn to him in 1862.[74]From north to south: The Danish part of Jutland in purple and terracotta, Schleswig in red and brown, and Holstein in lime yellow. The Schleswig-Holstein Question was about the status of those territories.

Three episodes proved fundamental to the unification of Germany. First, the death without male heirs of Frederick VII of Denmark led to the Second War of Schleswig in 1864. Second, the unification of Italy provided Prussia an ally against Austria in the Austro-Prussian War of 1866. Finally, France—fearing Hohenzollern encirclement—declared war on Prussia in 1870, resulting in the Franco-Prussian War. Through a combination of Bismarck’s diplomacy and political leadership, von Roon‘s military reorganization, and von Moltke‘s military strategy, Prussia demonstrated that none of the European signatories of the 1815 peace treaty could guarantee Austria’s sphere of influence in Central Europe, thus achieving Prussian hegemony in Germany and ending the dualism debate.[75]

The Schleswig-Holstein Question[edit]

Main article: Second Schleswig War

The first episode in the saga of German unification under Bismarck came with the Schleswig-Holstein Question. On 15 November 1863, Christian IX became king of Denmark and duke of Schleswig, Holstein, and Lauenburg, which the Danish king held in personal union. On 18 November 1863, he signed the Danish November Constitution which replaced The Law of Sjælland and The Law of Jutland, which meant the new constitution applied to the Duchy of Schleswig. The German Confederation saw this act as a violation of the London Protocol of 1852, which emphasized the status of the Kingdom of Denmark as distinct from the three independent duchies. The German Confederation could use the ethnicities of the area as a rallying cry: Holstein and Lauenburg were largely of German origin and spoke German in everyday life, while Schleswig had a significant Danish population and history. Diplomatic attempts to have the November Constitution repealed collapsed, and fighting began when Prussian and Austrian troops crossed the Eider river on 1 February 1864.

Initially, the Danes attempted to defend their country using an ancient earthen wall known as the Danevirke, but this proved futile. The Danes were no match for the combined Prussian and Austrian forces and their modern armaments. The needle gun, one of the first bolt action rifles to be used in conflict, aided the Prussians in both this war and the Austro-Prussian War two years later. The rifle enabled a Prussian soldier to fire five shots while lying prone, while its muzzle-loading counterpart could only fire one shot and had to be reloaded while standing. The Second Schleswig War resulted in victory for the combined armies of Prussia and Austria, and the two countries won control of Schleswig and Holstein in the concluding peace of Vienna, signed on 30 October 1864.[76]

War between Austria and Prussia, 1866[edit]

Main article: Austro-Prussian WarSituation at the time of the outbreak of the war:  Prussia  Austria  Austria’s allies  Prussia’s allies  Neutral  Under joint administration (Schleswig-Holstein)

The second episode in Bismarck’s unification efforts occurred in 1866. In concert with the newly formed Italy, Bismarck created a diplomatic environment in which Austria declared war on Prussia. The dramatic prelude to the war occurred largely in Frankfurt, where the two powers claimed to speak for all the German states in the parliament. In April 1866, the Prussian representative in Florence signed a secret agreement with the Italian government, committing each state to assist the other in a war against Austria. The next day, the Prussian delegate to the Frankfurt assembly presented a plan calling for a national constitution, a directly elected national Diet, and universal suffrage. German liberals were justifiably skeptical of this plan, having witnessed Bismarck’s difficult and ambiguous relationship with the Prussian Landtag (State Parliament), a relationship characterized by Bismarck’s cajoling and riding roughshod over the representatives. These skeptics saw the proposal as a ploy to enhance Prussian power rather than a progressive agenda of reform.[77]

Choosing sides[edit]

The debate over the proposed national constitution became moot when news of Italian troop movements in Tyrol and near the Venetian border reached Vienna in April 1866. The Austrian government ordered partial mobilization in the southern regions; the Italians responded by ordering full mobilization. Despite calls for rational thought and action, Italy, Prussia, and Austria continued to rush toward armed conflict. On 1 May, Wilhelm gave von Moltke command over the Prussian armed forces, and the next day he began full-scale mobilization.[78]

In the Diet, the group of middle-sized states, known as Mittelstaaten (Bavaria, Württemberg, the grand duchies of Baden and Hesse, and the duchies of Saxony–Weimar, Saxony–Meiningen, Saxony–Coburg, and Nassau), supported complete demobilization within the Confederation. These individual governments rejected the potent combination of enticing promises and subtle (or outright) threats Bismarck used to try to gain their support against the Habsburgs. The Prussian war cabinet understood that its only supporters among the German states against the Habsburgs were two small principalities bordering on Brandenburg that had little military strength or political clout: the Grand Duchies of Mecklenburg-Schwerin and Mecklenburg-Strelitz. They also understood that Prussia’s only ally abroad was Italy.[79]

Opposition to Prussia’s strong-armed tactics surfaced in other social and political groups. Throughout the German states, city councils, liberal parliamentary members who favored a unified state, and chambers of commerce—which would see great benefits from unification—opposed any war between Prussia and Austria. They believed any such conflict would only serve the interests of royal dynasties. Their own interests, which they understood as “civil” or “bourgeois”, seemed irrelevant. Public opinion also opposed Prussian domination. Catholic populations along the Rhine—especially in such cosmopolitan regions as Cologne and in the heavily populated Ruhr Valley—continued to support Austria. By late spring, most important states opposed Berlin’s effort to reorganize the German states by force. The Prussian cabinet saw German unity as an issue of power and a question of who had the strength and will to wield that power. Meanwhile, the liberals in the Frankfurt assembly saw German unity as a process of negotiation that would lead to the distribution of power among the many parties.[80]

Austria isolated[edit]

Prussian Prince Friedrich Carl ordering his enthusiastic troops to attack at the Battle of Königgrätz

Although several German states initially sided with Austria, they stayed on the defensive and failed to take effective initiatives against Prussian troops. The Austrian army therefore faced the technologically superior Prussian army with support only from Saxony. France promised aid, but it came late and was insufficient.[81] Complicating the situation for Austria, the Italian mobilization on Austria’s southern border required a diversion of forces away from battle with Prussia to fight the Third Italian War of Independence on a second front in Venetia and on the Adriatic sea.[82]Aftermath of the war:  Prussia  Territories annexed by Prussia  Prussia’s allies  Austria  Austria’s allies  Neutral members of the German Confederation

In the day-long Battle of Königgrätz, near the village of Sadová, Friedrich Carl and his troops arrived late, and in the wrong place. Once he arrived, however, he ordered his troops immediately into the fray. The battle was a decisive victory for Prussia and forced the Habsburgs to end the war,[83] laying the groundwork for the Kleindeutschland (little Germany) solution, or “Germany without Austria.”

Realpolitik and the North German Confederation[edit]

Further information: North German Confederation

A quick peace was essential to keep Russia from entering the conflict on Austria’s side.[84] Prussia annexed Hanover, Hesse-Kassel, Nassau, and the city of Frankfurt. Hesse Darmstadt lost some territory but not its sovereignty. The states south of the Main River (Baden, Württemberg, and Bavaria) signed separate treaties requiring them to pay indemnities and to form alliances bringing them into Prussia’s sphere of influence. Austria, and most of its allies, were excluded from the North German Confederation.[85]

The end of Austrian dominance of the German states shifted Austria’s attention to the Balkans. In 1867, the Austrian emperor Franz Joseph accepted a settlement (the Austro-Hungarian Compromise of 1867) in which he gave his Hungarian holdings equal status with his Austrian domains, creating the Dual Monarchy of Austria-Hungary.[86] The Peace of Prague (1866) offered lenient terms to Austria, in which Austria’s relationship with the new nation-state of Italy underwent major restructuring; although the Austrians were far more successful in the military field against Italian troops, the monarchy lost the important province of Venetia. The Habsburgs ceded Venetia to France, which then formally transferred control to Italy.[87] The French public resented the Prussian victory and demanded Revanche pour Sadová (“Revenge for Sadova”), illustrating anti-Prussian sentiment in France—a problem that would accelerate in the months leading up to the Franco-Prussian War.[88] The Austro-Prussian War also damaged relations with the French government. At a meeting in Biarritz in September 1865 with Napoleon III, Bismarck had let it be understood (or Napoleon had thought he understood) that France might annex parts of Belgium and Luxembourg in exchange for its neutrality in the war. These annexations did not happen, resulting in animosity from Napoleon towards Bismarck.

The reality of defeat for Austria caused a reevaluation of internal divisions, local autonomy, and liberalism.[89] The new North German Confederation had its own constitution, flag, and governmental and administrative structures. Through military victory, Prussia under Bismarck’s influence had overcome Austria’s active resistance to the idea of a unified Germany. Austria’s influence over the German states may have been broken, but the war also splintered the spirit of pan-German unity: most of the German states resented Prussian power politics.[90]

War with France[edit]

Further information: Causes of the Franco-Prussian War

By 1870 three of the important lessons of the Austro-Prussian war had become apparent. The first lesson was that, through force of arms, a powerful state could challenge the old alliances and spheres of influence established in 1815. Second, through diplomatic maneuvering, a skillful leader could create an environment in which a rival state would declare war first, thus forcing states allied with the “victim” of external aggression to come to the leader’s aid. Finally, as Prussian military capacity far exceeded that of Austria, Prussia was clearly the only state within the Confederation (or among the German states generally) capable of protecting all of them from potential interference or aggression. In 1866, most mid-sized German states had opposed Prussia, but by 1870 these states had been coerced and coaxed into mutually protective alliances with Prussia. In the event that a European state declared war on one of their members, they all would come to the defense of the attacked state. With skillful manipulation of European politics, Bismarck created a situation in which France would play the role of aggressor in German affairs, while Prussia would play that of the protector of German rights and liberties.[91]

Spheres of influence fall apart in Spain[edit]

At the Congress of Vienna in 1815, Metternich and his conservative allies had reestablished the Spanish monarchy under King Ferdinand VII. Over the following forty years, the great powers supported the Spanish monarchy, but events in 1868 would further test the old system. A revolution in Spain overthrew Queen Isabella II, and the throne remained empty while Isabella lived in sumptuous exile in Paris. The Spanish, looking for a suitable Catholic successor, had offered the post to three European princes, each of whom was rejected by Napoleon III, who served as regional power-broker. Finally, in 1870 the Regency offered the crown to Leopold of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen, a prince of the Catholic cadet Hohenzollern line. The ensuing furor has been dubbed by historians as the Hohenzollern candidature.[92]

Over the next few weeks, the Spanish offer turned into the talk of Europe. Bismarck encouraged Leopold to accept the offer.[93] A successful installment of a Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen king in Spain would mean that two countries on either side of France would both have German kings of Hohenzollern descent. This may have been a pleasing prospect for Bismarck, but it was unacceptable to either Napoleon III or to Agenor, duc de Gramont, his minister of foreign affairs. Gramont wrote a sharply formulated ultimatum to Wilhelm, as head of the Hohenzollern family, stating that if any Hohenzollern prince should accept the crown of Spain, the French government would respond—although he left ambiguous the nature of such response. The prince withdrew as a candidate, thus defusing the crisis, but the French ambassador to Berlin would not let the issue lie.[94] He approached the Prussian king directly while Wilhelm was vacationing in Ems Spa, demanding that the King release a statement saying he would never support the installation of a Hohenzollern on the throne of Spain. Wilhelm refused to give such an encompassing statement, and he sent Bismarck a dispatch by telegram describing the French demands. Bismarck used the king’s telegram, called the Ems Dispatch, as a template for a short statement to the press. With its wording shortened and sharpened by Bismarck—and further alterations made in the course of its translation by the French agency Havas—the Ems Dispatch raised an angry furor in France. The French public, still aggravated over the defeat at Sadová, demanded war.[95]

Military operations[edit]

Further information: Franco-Prussian WarEmperor Napoleon III (left) at Sedan, on 2 September 1870, seated next to Prussian Chancellor Otto von Bismarck, holding Napoleon’s surrendered sword. The defeat of the French army destabilized Napoleon’s regime; a revolution in Paris established the Third French Republic, and the war continued.

Napoleon III had tried to secure territorial concessions from both sides before and after the Austro-Prussian War, but despite his role as mediator during the peace negotiations, he ended up with nothing. He then hoped that Austria would join in a war of revenge and that its former allies—particularly the southern German states of Baden, Württemberg, and Bavaria—would join in the cause. This hope would prove futile since the 1866 treaty came into effect and united all German states militarily—if not happily—to fight against France. Instead of a war of revenge against Prussia, supported by various German allies, France engaged in a war against all of the German states without any allies of its own.[96] The reorganization of the military by von Roon and the operational strategy of Moltke combined against France to great effect. The speed of Prussian mobilization astonished the French, and the Prussian ability to concentrate power at specific points—reminiscent of Napoleon I’s strategies seventy years earlier—overwhelmed French mobilization. Utilizing their efficiently laid rail grid, Prussian troops were delivered to battle areas rested and prepared to fight, whereas French troops had to march for considerable distances to reach combat zones. After a number of battles, notably Spicheren, Wörth, Mars la Tour, and Gravelotte, the Prussians defeated the main French armies and advanced on the primary city of Metz and the French capital of Paris. They captured Napoleon III and took an entire army as prisoners at Sedan on 1 September 1870.[97]

Proclamation of the German Empire[edit]

Further information: Proclamation of the German Empire

The humiliating capture of the French emperor and the loss of the French army itself, which marched into captivity at a makeshift camp in the Saarland (“Camp Misery”), threw the French government into turmoil; Napoleon’s energetic opponents overthrew his government and proclaimed the Third Republic.[98] “In the days after Sedan, Prussian envoys met with the French and demanded a large cash indemnity as well as the cession of Alsace and Lorraine. All parties in France rejected the terms, insisting that any armistice be forged “on the basis of territorial integrity.” France, in other words, would pay reparations for starting the war, but would, in Jules Favre’s famous phrase, “cede neither a clod of our earth nor a stone of our fortresses”.[99] The German High Command expected an overture of peace from the French, but the new republic refused to surrender. The Prussian army invested Paris and held it under siege until mid-January, with the city being “ineffectually bombarded”.[100] Nevertheless, in January, the Germans fired some 12,000 shells, 300–400 grenades daily into the city.[101] On 18 January 1871, the German princes and senior military commanders proclaimed Wilhelm “German Emperor” in the Hall of Mirrors at the Palace of Versailles.[102] Under the subsequent Treaty of Frankfurt, France relinquished most of its traditionally German regions (Alsace and the German-speaking part of Lorraine); paid an indemnity, calculated (on the basis of population) as the precise equivalent of the indemnity that Napoleon Bonaparte imposed on Prussia in 1807;[103] and accepted German administration of Paris and most of northern France, with “German troops to be withdrawn stage by stage with each installment of the indemnity payment”.[104]

Importance in the unification process[edit]

18 January 1871: The proclamation of the German Empire in the Hall of Mirrors at the Palace of Versailles. Bismarck appears in white. The Grand Duke of Baden stands beside Wilhelm, leading the cheers. Crown Prince Friedrich, later Friedrich III, stands on his father’s right. Painting by Anton von Werner

Victory in the Franco-Prussian War proved the capstone of the nationalist issue. In the first half of the 1860s, Austria and Prussia both contended to speak for the German states; both maintained they could support German interests abroad and protect German interests at home. In responding to the Schleswig-Holstein Question, they both proved equally diligent in doing so. After the victory over Austria in 1866, Prussia began internally asserting its authority to speak for the German states and defend German interests, while Austria began directing more and more of its attention to possessions in the Balkans. The victory over France in 1871 expanded Prussian hegemony in the German states (aside from Austria) to the international level. With the proclamation of Wilhelm as Kaiser, Prussia assumed the leadership of the new empire. The southern states became officially incorporated into a unified Germany at the Treaty of Versailles of 1871 (signed 26 February 1871; later ratified in the Treaty of Frankfurt of 10 May 1871), which formally ended the war.[105] Although Bismarck had led the transformation of Germany from a loose confederation into a federal nation state, he had not done it alone. Unification was achieved by building on a tradition of legal collaboration under the Holy Roman Empire and economic collaboration through the Zollverein. The difficulties of the Vormärz, the impact of the 1848 liberals, the importance of von Roon’s military reorganization, and von Moltke’s strategic brilliance all played a part in political unification.[106] “Einheit – unity – was achieved at the expense of Freiheit – freedom. The German Empire became, in Karl Marx’s words, “a military despotism cloaked in parliamentary forms with a feudal ingredient, influenced by the bourgeoisie, festooned with bureaucrats and guarded by police.”11 Indeed many historians would see Germany’s “escape into war” in 1914 as a flight from all of the internal-political contradictions forged by Bismarck at Versailles in the fall of 1870.[107]