A world of her own

This book, written by someone whose husband was for three years prime minister of Britain, is impossible to review. Yes, it is dull, but it is so triumphantly, so ineffably, dull it enters a breezy little monochrome world of its own. There is no characterisation, for no value judgments are passed, except those on Mrs Brown’s husband, who is portrayed as such a force for good he is virtually an extra-terrestrial being intervening in the affairs of men. As for the rest they are ‘charming’ or ‘lovely’.

This is Mrs Brown showing HRH Prince Andrew, as she calls him, round Chequers:

Without thinking, I open the drawer that holds the wax death mask of Oliver Cromwell. There is a bit of a collective gasp, and I suddenly realise that this might not have been the most diplomatically sensitive gesture on my part: showing the face of the Great Protector and signer of King Charles’s death warrant to a member of the Royal Family.