Faithful after his fashion

There is doubtless some passing pleasure to be had in making it into the Royal Enclosure or, failing that, the ‘Sunday Times Rich List’. But for those in political and media circles the last opportunity has passed for gaining immortality in the pages of the Pepys of our times now that the final volume of the Alan Clark diaries has been published. Part of the pleasure was the risk that inclusion entailed. A mention in the Alan Clark diaries is like playing Russian roulette with posterity.

One need only think of the late Peter Morrison who, thanks to Clark’s account, is now remembered as the man who slept when he was supposed to be running Margaret Thatcher’s leadership campaign. Ken Clarke is, it seems, destined to share a sentence with ‘pudgy puff-ball’. Other colleagues have suffered greater indignities. Such has Alan Clark’s reputation for quotability become that he has joined the likes of Oscar Wilde, F.