The story goes that my great-grandfather Murray Finch Hatton, MP for Lincolnshire in the 1880s and later 12th Earl of Winchilsea, shot an African tracker in the leg while big-game shooting in Kenya. Mortified by what he had done, he rushed forward and gave the tracker a golden guinea. The man limped off, but soon returned. He had consulted his wife, he said, and wondered if his lordship might kindly oblige by shooting him again. Dick Cheney didn’t need a golden guinea to buy the goodwill of Harry Whittington, 78, the multimillionaire Republican lawyer he shot two weeks ago while quail-shooting in south Texas. In fact, it is hard to imagine circumstances in which Whittington would allow any anger he might feel towards the Vice-President to become public. For Whittington is a Texas Republican loyalist, and the 50,000-acre Armstrong Ranch, where the shooting incident happened, is a sacred place for Republicans.
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