It isn’t good manners for somebody to criticise a great-uncle after his death, but I know from first-hand experience that my great-uncle, Lord Longford, either didn’t mind criticism or at least grew so used to it that he looked like he didn’t mind.
After he appeared in an Oxford Union debate in the early 1990s attacking the porn industry, I asked him whether he minded the tactics of his opponent, a porn-film director. The director had tried to ridicule him by offering him a part in a film.
‘Oh, I rather enjoyed that,’ he said, ‘Anyway, you must be here because you’re interested in politics. Would you like to be a Tory prime minister or a Labour one?’
The encounter summed him up: tough, curious, vain but, unlike most vain people, robust about being teased.
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