LITMIR.BIZ

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early days, could be spotted with his batons, as could Pat, doing acrobatics. When I think of this scene, I’m reminded of the families of circus performers described by Dickens in Hard Times:

      The father of one of the families was in the habit of balancing the father of another of the families on the top of a great pole; the father of a third family often made a pyramid of both those fathers … all the fathers could dance upon rolling casks, stand upon bottles, catch knives and balls, twirl hand-basins, ride upon anything, jump over everything, and stick at nothing. All the mothers could (and did) dance, upon the slack wire and the tight rope, and perform rapid acts on barebacked steeds; none of them were at all particular in respect of showing their legs …

      They all assumed to be mighty rakish and knowing, they were not very tidy in their private dresses, they were not at all orderly in their domestic arrangements, and the combined literature of the whole company would have produced but a poor letter on any subject. Yet there was a remarkable gentleness and childishness about these people, a special inaptitude for any kind of sharp practice, and an untiring readiness to help and pity one another, deserving, often of as much respect, and always as much generous construction, as the everyday virtues of any class of people in the world.

      I remember my father as a stern old man, but kind. My mother idolised him and cared for him in every way. She must have known of his earlier dalliances, but nothing was ever said, at least not in our hearing. Our father’s word was law, and he never had to raise his voice to keep order. In his prime he had been a truly striking figure, ‘a great and stylish Edwardian actor,’ one biographer of mine has written, ‘over six feet tall, athletic in build and expansive in his gestures.’ Now ill and prematurely aged, he was still master in his house.

      But it was my mother who brought up the family and ran the home. My father made the decisions. She carried them out. She was a Peter Pan figure who never quite grew up. The sprite of mischief was always with her. Loving and beloved, she was a magnet for lame ducks. I remember sitting at the table about to eat my lunch when a cold and hungry gypsy knocked at the door. He was invited in and my mother served him my meal, leaving me hungry. She did not ask me to do the washing up – she would not have considered that fair. But neither did she ask the gypsy to do it.

      Gwen had a straightforward philosophy. Share what you’ve got. Be polite to others. Think of their feelings. Make allowances for them. Stand up for yourself but don’t cause unnecessary offence. Don’t show your own feelings. It was a simple code. She believed it and she lived it.

      At the age of five I went to Cheam Common Infants’ School, which was around half a mile from our home in Longfellow Road, graduating to the Junior School in the autumn of 1950. I was taken to school at first, but it was an easy journey, and I was soon walking there and back on my own.

      Sometimes I was given small amounts of pocket money on a rather haphazard basis – or earned it by doing small tasks. With this I often bought presents for my mother. My father did not approve. ‘That is not why we give him the money,’ I overheard him say to my mother. ‘Why does he do it?’ He was angry and I didn’t understand why. His view was that they had given me some of the little they had, and he did not think I should spend it on them. But I often did. I liked giving presents and my mother loved receiving them.

      I liked receiving presents too, and except for one occasion when there was no money, Christmas and birthdays always brought something. Footballs, Meccano sets, pens and pencils for school, and classic books: Ivanhoe, Quentin Durward, The Black Arrow, Tom Brown’s Schooldays, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, Knights of the Round Table, the Greyfriars stories – all of these and many more were favourites. Thus began my lifelong love affair with books.

      Books introduced me to a world I’d never known, and people I would never meet. My parents encouraged me to read, although my father was too active and physical a man to be a great reader himself. He had too much else to do. But later, after he began to lose his sight, he derived great pleasure from the ‘talking books’ sent to him by the Nuffield Centre for the Blind, which came in large pouches and were fragile records like the old 78s of the time. They kept introspection at bay when his dreams crumbled. I would sit with him and listen to them for hour upon hour. We often talked of books. The authors he remembered from his youth were Rider Haggard, Jack London and Arthur Conan Doyle – and not only, he said, for the Sherlock Holmes stories.

      ‘Have you ever read The White Company?’ he asked. I hadn’t, and nor did I until the 1990s, when Stephen Wall, my Private Secretary at the Foreign Office and later at Number 10, and subsequently our Ambassador to the European Union, gave me his own precious copy.

      My mother didn’t read much. She was too busy running the family, cosseting my father and helping lame ducks. I don’t think my brother Terry was much of a reader either, but I could be wrong, because he has surprised me all my life. I’m never quite sure what he’ll do next – and neither, I suspect, is he. He seems to enjoy allowing the world to underestimate him while he chuckles at it.

      My sister Pat did read – a lot. Academically, she was the clever one of the family, and an astute judge of character. After I became prime minister she would phone me up and say, ‘Don’t trust him. He’s up to no good.’ She was almost always right.

      For me, books were an escape and an education. Some became lifelong friends. Fame is the Spur, A Horseman Riding By, How Green was my Valley, Trollope – Phineas Finn and Phineas Redux were never far from hand. Biographies and histories joined Agatha Christie, Neville Cardus, Thomas Costain and many more, not forgetting Mrs Henry Wood’s East Lynne. I loved Jane Austen and Dickens – especially The Pickwick Papers, A Tale of Two Cities and Great Expectations.

      I learned that there is as much to be learned from durable, well-written bestsellers as from more serious offerings. For me, these books were more than mere entertainment. They became companions and tutors, cherished friends to be picked up again and again, the true furniture of the mind. I did try more heavyweight reading when I began studying in my late teens. I read Kafka and Voltaire, Spinoza on ethics and Aristotle on politics. I even read Nietzsche, to try to see why his writings had become textbooks of the Nazis. I dipped into Colette, Hardy and Voltaire, and added them to my collection. Most of these books remain on my shelves today.

      I can remember none of my friends from primary school, but I cannot have been unpopular for I was elected captain of the football team. We won most of our games and were good enough to reach the final of a local schools’ knockout competition, but lost 2–1 after I gave away a silly goal. I was inconsolable. I also learned to play cricket. Once I was given out lbw first ball, when I knew I had hit the ball smack in the middle of the bat. ‘But I hit it,’ I protested, confident that my explanation would persuade the umpire to put right his mistaken decision. It didn’t. ‘You’re out,’ he said, waving his hand in dismissal. ‘Now off you go.’ It was the first time I realised that adults were fallible and that, if on shaky ground, they could become even more assertive than if they were right.

      I had a few fights at school, mostly with boys who were throwing their weight around, and it led to trouble. I was winning one when a teacher dragged me away from the scrap, slapping me painfully around my head and shoulders and visibly losing his self-control. I was contemptuous of him from then on. I thought he was unjust. But I wasn’t a natural troublemaker. I worked quite hard and was as keen to please as most small boys. When we were asked to produce a painting for an exhibition I misunderstood and took in one that my elder sister, Pat, an excellent artist, had painted. I was mortified to overhear a teacher saying I had brought in a painting, but ‘his sister did it’. I felt like a cheat and slunk away.

      At home I had pets. I bred mice and sold them to friends, with a slice of fruitcake thrown in as an inducement to buy. My white doe angora rabbit, Frisky, was given an assignation with a blue bevan buck rabbit owned by a friend. We watched and waited with interest, and were not disappointed. A litter was produced, though not all survived. We had a dog, too, a white bull terrier called Butch. He was a wonderful companion and curled up on my bed each night, before returning to the lounge as soon as he thought I was asleep.

      I pause, writing this. Everyone must have such stories from childhood.

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