It’s time to canonise Britain’s most humiliated man – or so his wife told me
It is peculiar, is it not, how long-dormant memories suddenly erupt for no discernible reason? The workings of the subconscious tending to the impenetrably opaque, I’ve no clue what reignited this one. But, whatever the reason, a long-forgotten encounter has lately been flashing vibrantly back to mind. Several years before the pandemic, a dinner party in central London was richly enlivened by a latecomer. The hostess had explained the empty chair by reference to a friend unable to join us until 10.30pm. Even as the clock chimed the half-hour, in bustled a woman of middling years with the gait, aura and haphazard enthusiasm of a Labrador puppy. She seemed a jolly, engaging kind of person, if not necessarily one likely to be given a permanent berth at the All Souls high table any time soon. Anyway, an hour or so later, I was on my way towards the front door...
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