abuse after him. Slowly the room is overtaken by an uneasy quiet. Hogg returns, his face ashen, his movements stiff and self-conscious. Not a sound greets him. Still he waits, head bowed as he gathers strength. He lifts his head and we see tears streaming down his cheeks.
Finally, he says it. For now, and for all time. A statement so finite, so unarguable, that unlike any other he has made tonight, it will never be contested.
âI have just been informed that President Kennedy has been assassinated. The meeting is over.â
It is ten years later. A Foreign Service friend invites me to a grand dinner at All Souls College, Oxford, in honour of an extinct benefactor. We are all men, which I believe in those days was the rule. Nobody is young. The food is exquisite; the erudite conversation, what I can understand of it, refined. Between each phase of the feast we process from one candlelit dining room to another, each more beautiful than the last, each with a long table set in ageless College silver. As we change rooms, so the seating arrangement changes with us, which is how at the second â or was it third? â remove I find myself placed next to the same Quintin Hogg, or as his name card now proclaims him, the recently created Baron Hailsham of St Marylebone. Having renounced his earlier title in order to enter the Commons, the former Mr Hogg has provided himself with a new title in order to return to the Lords.
Iâm not good at small talk at the best of times, least of all when I am landed with a combative Tory peer with political views that, insofar as I have any, fly directly in the face of my own. The venerable scholar to my left is expounding eloquently on a subject of which I know nothing. The venerable scholar across the table is arguing a point of Greek mythology. I am not sound on Greek mythology. But the Baron Hailsham on my right, having taken one look at my place card, has lapsed into a silence so disapproving, so morose and absolute that in all courtesy I feel compelled to end it. Today I cannot explain what quirk of social manners forbade me to refer to the moment when news of Kennedyâs assassination was brought to him at St Pancras Town Hall. Perhaps I supposed he would have no wish to be reminded of such a public display of emotion.
For want of a better subject, I talk about myself. I explain that I am a writer by profession, I unveil my pen-name, which does not enthralhim. Or perhaps he knows it already, which accounts for his despondency. I say I am fortunate to have a house in Hampstead, but live mostly in West Cornwall. I extol the beauties of the Cornish countryside. I ask him whether he too has somewhere in the country where he can stretch out at weekends. Now at least he must respond. He has indeed such a place, and tells me so in three exasperated words:
âHailsham, you fool.â
6
Wheels of British justice
In the mid-summer of 1963, an eminent West German lawmaker who was in my care in London as an official guest of Her Majestyâs government voiced a wish to see the wheels of British justice turning, and voiced it in the presence of no less a luminary than the Lord Chancellor of England himself, whose name was Dilhorne, but before that, Manningham-Buller â or, as his colleagues on the bench preferred to call him, Bullying Manner.
A Lord Chancellor is the member of the cabinet responsible for the management of the nationâs law courts. If political influence is to be brought to bear on a particular trial, which Heaven forbid, then the Lord Chancellor is the most likely person to do the job. The topic of our meeting, in which Dilhorne had displayed not an ounce of interest, had been the recruitment and training of young judges for the German bench. For my eminent German guest, this was a crucial matter affecting the future of the German legal profession in the wake of Nazism. For Lord Dilhorne it was a needless claim on his valuable time, and he
Finally, he says it. For now, and for all time. A statement so finite, so unarguable, that unlike any other he has made tonight, it will never be contested.
âI have just been informed that President Kennedy has been assassinated. The meeting is over.â
It is ten years later. A Foreign Service friend invites me to a grand dinner at All Souls College, Oxford, in honour of an extinct benefactor. We are all men, which I believe in those days was the rule. Nobody is young. The food is exquisite; the erudite conversation, what I can understand of it, refined. Between each phase of the feast we process from one candlelit dining room to another, each more beautiful than the last, each with a long table set in ageless College silver. As we change rooms, so the seating arrangement changes with us, which is how at the second â or was it third? â remove I find myself placed next to the same Quintin Hogg, or as his name card now proclaims him, the recently created Baron Hailsham of St Marylebone. Having renounced his earlier title in order to enter the Commons, the former Mr Hogg has provided himself with a new title in order to return to the Lords.
Iâm not good at small talk at the best of times, least of all when I am landed with a combative Tory peer with political views that, insofar as I have any, fly directly in the face of my own. The venerable scholar to my left is expounding eloquently on a subject of which I know nothing. The venerable scholar across the table is arguing a point of Greek mythology. I am not sound on Greek mythology. But the Baron Hailsham on my right, having taken one look at my place card, has lapsed into a silence so disapproving, so morose and absolute that in all courtesy I feel compelled to end it. Today I cannot explain what quirk of social manners forbade me to refer to the moment when news of Kennedyâs assassination was brought to him at St Pancras Town Hall. Perhaps I supposed he would have no wish to be reminded of such a public display of emotion.
For want of a better subject, I talk about myself. I explain that I am a writer by profession, I unveil my pen-name, which does not enthralhim. Or perhaps he knows it already, which accounts for his despondency. I say I am fortunate to have a house in Hampstead, but live mostly in West Cornwall. I extol the beauties of the Cornish countryside. I ask him whether he too has somewhere in the country where he can stretch out at weekends. Now at least he must respond. He has indeed such a place, and tells me so in three exasperated words:
âHailsham, you fool.â
6
Wheels of British justice
In the mid-summer of 1963, an eminent West German lawmaker who was in my care in London as an official guest of Her Majestyâs government voiced a wish to see the wheels of British justice turning, and voiced it in the presence of no less a luminary than the Lord Chancellor of England himself, whose name was Dilhorne, but before that, Manningham-Buller â or, as his colleagues on the bench preferred to call him, Bullying Manner.
A Lord Chancellor is the member of the cabinet responsible for the management of the nationâs law courts. If political influence is to be brought to bear on a particular trial, which Heaven forbid, then the Lord Chancellor is the most likely person to do the job. The topic of our meeting, in which Dilhorne had displayed not an ounce of interest, had been the recruitment and training of young judges for the German bench. For my eminent German guest, this was a crucial matter affecting the future of the German legal profession in the wake of Nazism. For Lord Dilhorne it was a needless claim on his valuable time, and he
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