Denis Healey will never be the same, once you discover, as you do in this fizzing collection of mini-biographies, that his favour- ite question is, ‘Do you have sexual fantasies when you smoke cigars?’ Peregrine Wors- thorne is now forever fixed in my mind exchanging shirts with the first Mrs Nigel Lawson in a crowded Wheeler’s restaurant during a Brighton party conference. And the dynamics of Private Eye fall into place when you know that, in the 1950 scholarship list for Shrewsbury, Richard Ingrams came first, Christopher Booker third and the late Paul Foot fifth.
Alan Watkins, the eminent political columnist, now for the Independent on Sunday and for many years in these pages, is the master of the well-deployed fact, and, more importantly, the personal fact. You get the flavour of Roy Jenkins when you hear that he suggested, over lunch with Watkins, a joint business venture — putting good-quality wine in one-litre bottles and selling it to restaurants.
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