Lord Bonkers' Diary: The King of the Badgers

The new issue of Liberator is with subscribers, so it is time to spend another week in the company of Rutland's most celebrated fictional peer.

I suspect apologies are due to T.H. White, the Revd J.P. Martin and even Kenneth Grahame.

Oh, and Liberator has a blog now.

Anyway...

Sunday

When in need of wise counsel, I take myself off to a woody bank beneath the Ornamental Arch I erected to mark the victory of Wallace Lawler in the Birmingham Ladywood by-election of 1969 and rap on a door half obscured by foliage. There, after much shuffling and snuffling from within, I am admitted to a dark hallway and then to the cosiest of studies. On its walls are shelves housing the works of our finest poets, a cricket bat signed by the 1948 Australians, an election address from Sir Alan Beith, an oar used by the victorious Oxford eight of 1954, a set of cigarette cards depicting the Presidents of the Liberal Party and a framed photograph of Dorothy Tutin.

There, before a crackling fire, I enjoy a modest supper of toasted cheese or angels on horseback and more than one tumbler of Auld Johnston (that most celebrated of Highland malts) while setting the world to rights with the King of the Badgers. This evening, I am sorry to learn that one of his granddaughters is unwell and is to be sent to a sanatorium in Switzerland to recover if the Wise Woman of Wing’s remedies prove ineffective.

Lord Bonkers was Liberal MP for Rutland South-West 1906-10.