This Cleggmania thing is all very well, but we remember when the Liberals had a properly newsworthy leader. Back in the 1970s Liberal leader Jeremy Thorpe was accused of trying to have his secret gay lover, Norman Scott, assassinated. While Scott was out walking his Great Dane, Rinka, someone fired a shot at him, but the bullet missed and hit the dog. Thorpe was acquitted of conspiracy to murder.Ah yes, those were the days. My friend Clara’s uncle Alexander Chancellor’s friend Auberon Waugh (I have the Private Eye/Spitting Image portrait of him hanging on my office wall, thanks to Chris Slane) stood against Thorpe in 1979 on the Dog-Lovers’ Party ticket.
Waugh wrote a book about Thorpe, The Last Word. I lent it to a friend 30 years ago and have not seen it since. I’d quite like to have it back. And also Waugh’s 1969 heart-rending account (with Suzanne Cronje) of the Nigerian civil war, Biafra, Britain’s Shame. The moral: never lend a book, and especially not two to the same person.
3 comments:
Actually, having lent literally over a gross of books -which were never returned - the moral has to be - NEVER lend a book (except upon returnable receipt of lendee's right hand or MSO.)
O, I understand Rinka (the Great Dane) had also been loaned by a friend - need we say more?
maybe it's time to say Rinka wasn't scott's dog. he was looking after her...the owner was chris lawrence.
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