A toast to Le Roi Jen Quinze

There ought to be a new literary award: the antisocial book of the year. A dozen years ago, Claire Tomalin’s Pepys would have won the laurels by a country mile. That Christmas, everyone seemed to have been given a copy, and normally healthy eaters would arise from the lunch table after only three hours, desperate to return to Pepys. It was impossible to raise a four for bridge. Although John Campbell’s biography of Roy Jenkins is not quite so compulsive, it would take this year’s prize.

Inter alia, Mr Campbell solves one of the small historical mysteries of our time. Denis Healey has always insisted that Roy was a closet homosexual. Despite his record as Chancellor, Denis has some grasp on reality. So what is going on? Roy would certainly have needed a vast closet to hide all his mistresses, whereas Denis always appeared to be contentedly uxorious. But was there a bat-squeak of subconscious envy? Now all is revealed. Roy had an undergraduate infatuation with Tony Crosland, which Denis knew about. Crosland remained ambidextrous; Roy emphatically did not. That did not inhibit Denis, who had the ingredients of a lifelong tease.

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Ross Clark

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Roy was immensely engaging — one reason for the queue of mistresses. Before the phrase was invented, he knew all about the work/life balance. He wanted to play a major role in great events while enjoying himself. The enjoyment included wine, principally claret. With their complex classification, the wines of Bordeaux appeal to the Wisden-minded, which was one of Roy’s foibles. He loved making lists and deciding on hierarchies.

This could come perilously close to self-parody. When extracts of his Brussels diaries appeared in the Observer, it seemed that he had foot-faulted across the boundary. There were lots of references to the third best-read Queen he had ever met, or the fourth best wine list in the Grand Sablon.