Not going gentle into the good night

Retirement, especially for a prime minister, used to being frantically busy in the full gaze of the public, is a melancholy thing. The younger he — or she — is, the more it hurts, with long years of inactivity and growing oblivion stretching ahead. I often think that the most successful of all British politicians, in a worldly but also in a personal sense, was Lord Palmerston. Not only did he hold offices of one kind or another for longer than anyone else, a total of nearly 60 years, but he died as prime minister. His last words, as reported, were: ‘Die? My dear doctor, that’s the last thing I shall do.’ So he was confident to the end; and if the key word in the rhetorical question had been ‘resign’, the saying would have been even more apt. Shortly before, he had made the last of his many jokes.