Status Anxiety | 28 June 2008

My father was a lifelong socialist. He joined the Labour party at the age of 16 and at the time of his death, 70 years later, he was a Labour member of the House of Lords. He was a fairly typical left-winger in that he preferred the company of the poor to the rich and he regarded conspicuous consumption — particularly that of the nouveau riche — as the eighth deadly sin. However, he did have one capitalist vice: he was obsessed with cars. This may explain why during his most politically active phase, when he was plotting the downfall of the ruling class, he drove a Bentley.

I was supposed to inherit that Bentley. As I sat in the back playing with the electric windows, my father would tell me to treat the upholstery with care as he intended to give me the car on my 21st birthday. Unfortunately, it never happened.