Mrs Thatcher’s Admirer

Ian Aitken

  • Time to declare by David Owen
    Joseph, 822 pp, £20.00, September 1991, ISBN 0 7181 3514 8

Denis Healey, a politician who long ago established that the hobnailed boot can be wielded with just as much delicacy and skill as the épée, once said of David Owen that the Good Fairy who attended his birth had generously bestowed upon him the three qualities of charm, intelligence and good looks. He is then reported to have added: ‘What a pity that the Bad Fairy made him a shit.’

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