Book Review: Young Aleister Crowley and the Magicians’ Revolt by Lon Milo DuQuette and Jim Bratkowsky

This review appears in the new issue of Liberator, which you can download free of charge from the magazine's website.

Young Aleister Crowley and the Magicians’ Revolt

Lon Milo DuQuette and Jim Bratkowsky

Weiser Books, 2026, £14.99

The year is 1900 and a young Aleister Crowley – poet, mountaineer and Cambridge chess Blue – is keen to learn the mysteries of London’s leading occultists, but he arrives in this fashionable circle to find it riven by a power struggle. The old guard of MacGregor Mathers and his wife Moina, who were real historical figures, are being challenged by a new generation that includes W.B. Yeats, Maud Gonne and Bram Stoker.

Young Aleister Crowley and the Magicians’ Revolt began life as a screenplay, which at one time came close to being shot with the late Alan Rickman as the lead. Its frustrating history is set out in a preface and, perhaps because of that history, this novelisation sees an eminent British director describing, to a young American who is also in the movie business, the action of a film about Crowley he has long planned but is now too ill to make. This extended dialogue takes place at a wake held for Crowley after his funeral in 1947 at the Marylebone home of two more real figures, Sir Percy and Lady Frieda Harris.

Percy Harris held Harborough for the Liberals at a wartime by-election in 1916, but was defeated there two years later after his Conservative opponent received Lloyd George’s coupon. He returned to Westminster as MP for Bethnal Green South West in 1922 and represented that seat until 1945, becoming one of Sir Archibald Sinclair’s most important lieutenants. Frieda Harris, his wife, was an artist and follower of Crowley who painted his famous Thoth tarot pack. After Sir Percy’s death in 1952 she moved to a houseboat in Kashmir and made a modest income from writing and artistic projects. When Matthew Taylor (now Baron Taylor of Goss Moor), the former Liberal and Liberal Democrat MP for Truro, who was adopted as a baby, traced his birth mother, he found that Sir Percy and Lady Frieda were among his great grandparents.

But it’s not just the Liberal trivia that makes this book fun. Young Aleister Crowley and the Magicians’ Revolt, a work of fantasy that is firmly grounded in fact, paints an intriguing picture of an Edwardian London where men in wing collars and women in enormous hats believe the most extraordinary things. It’s a world not unlike the one G.K. Chesterton created in The Man Who Was Thursday.

Finding our more about Frieda Harris and Aleister Crowley

"It's time to find out more about Frieda Harris," I wrote the other day of the woman who was the wife of one Liberal MP (Sir Percy Harris) and great grandmother of another (Matthew Taylor), an who helped fund the notorious Aleister Crowley.

A good place to starts is an article by Brianna Di Monda about Frieda and her partnership with Crowley published in Lapham's Quarterly.

She writes of Frieda's early life:

Growing up in a wealthy, middle-class family, Lady Frieda Harris was taught only the arts—drawing, music, dancing—and conversational French. Though women were benefiting from expanded opportunities in the late nineteenth century, Harris’ education prepared her only for a good marriage. It also likely readied her for a life of being a voracious autodidact. 

After she left school, her interest in mysticism—incited, perhaps, by her mother reading her light texts about Buddhism at a young age and her father’s membership in the United Grand Lodge of England (England’s governing Masonic lodge for the majority of Freemasons)—carried her far beyond her traditional schooling. She read widely about alternative belief systems and became involved in theosophy and, briefly, Christian Science.

Above all, Harris committed herself to painting, which she also used as a springboard for further spiritual involvement. As an artist, Harris exhibited her work in prominent London galleries. There are rumors that she was a co-mason, a form of Freemasonry that admits female members, for whom she painted surreal Masonic trestle boards, the graphic teaching devices of Freemasonry. Her 1926 illustrated book Winchelsea: A Legend—which chronicles Dionysus’ imagined adventures in East Sussex—also reflects her interest in classical mythology and mysticism.

And then of her marriage to Sir Percy:

When Frieda married Sir Percy Harris in 1913, her husband encouraged her continued artistic pursuits. “My wife is an artist and a good one,” he wrote in the postscript of his 1948 memoir, Forty Years In and Out of Parliament. “She takes her art seriously, in fact works at her painting seven days a week and generally twelve hours out of the twenty-four. When, however, critics discover she is my wife she is immediately written down as an amateur and accordingly disparaged.” 

Frieda in turn supported Percy’s ambitions in Parliament: she joined his election campaigns, entertained their guests, ran his household, and involved herself in politics as a militant suffragist while he advocated for progressive legislative reforms. Their marriage was built on friendship and mutual admiration, but their relationship barely survived the years Frieda threw herself into painting an improved tarot deck.

That tarot deck was painted for Crowley, whom she first met in 1936 - by then he looked nothing like the satyr in my earlier post. He proved a demanding client - you can read all about their collaboration in Di Monda's article.

Despite that:

The two remained devoted to each other until the end of Crowley’s life in 1947, and Harris was named a co-executor of his will. She hosted a wake in his honor at her home in London.

And we know that she helped fund Crowley's living expenses for a time, which is what occasioned my earlier post.

Di Monda says that by the time Crowley died, Frieda and Sir Percy maintained separate London residences, though they still socialised and took holidays together.

And finally:

After Percy’s death in 1952, Frieda moved to a houseboat in Srinagar, in Kashmir “in search of a God,” making a modest income from writing and artistic projects, such as ballet designs. In a 1958 letter to a friend, she wrote that she still longed for Crowley, “who was so damned clever and without limitations.” She died four years later.

As you would expect with someone who dealt with esoteric subjects, Frieda's art fetches high prizes - I rather covet her book on Winchelsea. But you can buy a pack of her Tarot cards for a reasonable price.

Armed with them, a headscarf and golden earrings, I shall set myself up as fortuneteller and tour the local village fetes:

Madame Sosostris, famous clairvoyante,
Had a bad cold, nevertheless
Is known to be the wisest woman in Europe,
With a wicked pack of cards. Here, said she,
Is your card, the drowned Phoenician Sailor,
(Those are pearls that were his eyes. Look!)
Here is Belladonna, the Lady of the Rocks,
The lady of situations.
Here is the man with three staves, and here the Wheel,
And here is the one-eyed merchant, and this card,
Which is blank, is something he carries on his back,
Which I am forbidden to see. I do not find
The Hanged Man. Fear death by water.

Matthew Taylor's great grandmother funded Aleister Crowley, 'The Wickedest Man in the World'

Liberal England takes a deep breath: Matthew Taylor - that's Baron Taylor of Goss Moor, who was Liberal and then Liberal Democrat MP for Truro and then Truro and St Austell between 1987 and 2005 - was adopted as a baby. (His adoptive parents were the screenwriter Ken Taylor and his wife.)

In 2008 Matthew traced his he traced his birth mother, Margaret Harris. She was the daughter of the prominent New Zealand businessman Sir Jack Harris, and the granddaughter of the former Liberal chief whip Sir Percy Harris.

Sir Percy sat for Harborough between 1916 and 1918, and for Bethnal Green South West between 1922 and 1945.

His wife was an artist and, as I blogged long ago, she designed a Tarot pack for Aleister Crowley, who called himself "The Beast 666". The press preferred "The Wickedest Man in the World".

Reader's voice: Of course we remember all that. So what's new?

I've come across a review of a review of a biography of Crowley on the Lion & Unicorn blog. In it, Simon Matthews writes:

In the 1920s Crowley enjoyed an income of £10 a week, approximately £2,600 now, or £135,000 p.a. Declared bankrupt in 1934 (occupation: explorer) he still managed to keep up appearances, giving talks, including one at a literary luncheon at Foyles and being paid a weekly retainer of £2 (roughly £400 now) by book illustrator Freida Harris, wife of Percy Harris, Liberal MP for Bethnal Green South West. This allowed him to reside in a serviced flat in Hanover Square.

It's time to find out more about Frieda Harris.

Aleister Crowley's Tarot deck and the Liberal Party

Embed from Getty Images

Aleister Crowley - known to the press as 'the wickedest man in the world' - was an occultist, esoteric philosopher and much else besides.

This is a card ('The Fool') from his The Thoth Tarot. That was a Tarot deck painted for him and to his instructions by Lady Frieda Harris.

She was the wife of Sir Percy Harris, Liberal MP for Harborough from 1916 to 1918 and for Bethnal Green South West from 1922 to 1945.

And in 2008 it was revealed that Matthew Taylor, then the Liberal Democrat MP for Truro and St Austell, was the great grandson of Sir Percy and Lady Frieda. Adopted as a baby, he had traced his birth mother and discovered this connection.

Matthew was first elected as a Liberal for Truro in 1987 at the by-election that followed the death of David Penhaligon.

HIs mother, rather wonderfully, heard both Matthew and Sir Percy speak in the Commons.

Lord Bonkers 30 years ago: Instructing Campbell-Bannerman to "eat my shorts"

Lord Bonkers pointed out at dinner this evening that I am yet to publish an excerpt from his diary for August 1992. He also assured me that you are all bursting to read it.

Whatever the truth of that, here is a glimpse of the then Liberal Democrat MP for Truro, whom Lord B. must have known even then was the great-grandson of his old friend Sir Percy Harris. (He was less sure in those days of Paddy Ashdown's correct name.)

Wednesday

Consider Master Taylor: once a sweet, biddable child, he now lolls upon our benches listening to some dreadful row upon his "Walkman" (and yet he assures me it is Radical, so perhaps it is sound in its way). As for his behaviour towards Ashfield,,, all I shall say is that I should never have dreamed of instructing Campbell-Bannerman to "eat my shorts" or "get outta my face".

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

Lord Bonkers' Diary from the April 1991 Liberator

It's time to look back30 [gulp] years and see what Lord Bonkers was doing in Liberator 196, the April 1991 issue.

We journey to the glory days of Ronnie Fearn, who was Liberal MP for Southport from 1987 to 1992 and from 1997 to 2001. Also present is a youthful Matthew Taylor, Liberal MP for Truro from 1987 to 2010. The exchange between them at the glee club was exactly as reported here.

Adopted at birth, Matthew was later revealed to be the great grandson of Sir Percy Harris, who was Liberal MP for Harborough from 1916 to 1918.

This was news to me, but I suspect Lord Bonkers knew it all along.

Saturday

Just as I am preparing to depart for Twickenham, a party of Cornish Primitive Methodist clergy arrives. They express the wish to pass a thoroughly miserable  day, so I can do no other than take themto the "Spring Conference" of the "Liberal Democrats" at Nottingham. 

The journey goes smoothly, with a stop at Melton Mowbray to mortify the flesh, and we arrive in time to attend a lunchtime fringe meeting. My guests enjoy it immensely because the room has particularly uncomfortable chairs.

In retrospect, my decision to take them to the glee club was not well advised. In particular, whilst I found Miss Fearn's  rendition of "If You Were the Only Girl in the World" to Master Taylor peculiarly moving, the appeared somewhat shocked by it.

"Is this really the well-scrubbed fellow we see at Sunday School every week?", they quizzed one another. 

I have to spend the entire journey home  explaining what Miss Fearn had meant when she indicated her tie and said "This isn't the only thing that dangles."

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

Matthew Taylor, Percy Harris and Charles Masterman

Embed from Getty Images

Matthew Taylor, the former Liberal Democrat MP for Truro, was adopted as a baby by the film and television writer Ken Taylor and his wife.

In later life he decided to trace his birth mother, with the result that I blogged in 2008:

This morning's Times revealed that Matthew Taylor, the Lib Dem MP for Truro, who was adopted as a baby, has traced his birth mother. It turns out that she is the granddaughter of Sir Percy Harris, who was a prominent Liberal MP. 

Sir Percy was first elected to the Commons for Harborough at a 1916 by-election. There was an official truce between the parties, but he had to overcome strong opposition from Thomas Gibson Bowles, an Independent candidate backed by Lord Northcliffe and the Daily Mail. 

Like Charles Masterman, Harris was identified with the social reform wing of the Liberal Party but remained loyal to Asquith because he did not trust Lloyd George and his machinations with the Tories. The result was the he failed to receive the Coupon in Harborough in 1918 and the seat was lost to the Tories for the first time since 1891. 

Sir Percy returned to the House as MP for Bethnal Green South West in 1922 and was to hold the seat until 1945, by which time he was the last Liberal MP left in London. When the Liberals ran Tower Hamlets in the 1980s canvassers reported meeting old people who still voted Liberal "because of Sir Percy".

Later in that post I wrote that

Families do have an amazing way of rolling back the years. In a second Times article on the story, Matthew writes of his birth mother:

She has visited us twice and when I was Liberal shadow chancellor she sat in the Commons for the first time since she watched her grandfather speak as a little girl, to see my response to the budget.

When this story broke, Matthews's grandfather Sir Jack Harris was still alive at the age of 101. The reports said he had recently published his memoirs, so I ordered a copy in the hope it would contain some recollections of Harborough politics almost a century before.

From that point of view the book proved a disappointment - it read like the work of a man approaching his hundredth year.

He did write about the Harborough by-election of 1916, which his father Percy Harris won, but his memory proved disappointing:

My father was given the seat of Market Harborough by the party, where he was ... totally unknown. He managed to win this seat because there was a big Liberal swing when the Asquith government was elected in 1908 (sic). However, in a swing back in the next election he lost his seat.

As regular readers of this blog will know, the truth is that Harborough had been Liberal since 1891, largely because of the efforts of the mighty Paddy Logan.

And as I say in the post quoted above, Percy Harris lost Harborough in 1918 because he refused the Coupon from the Lloyd George coalition.

Yes Jack Harris did have something interesting to say about his father's political career:

My father wished to pursue his political career by standing for parliament for Bethnal Green, which he already represented on the London County Council, but party HQ thought otherwise. They sent down a man called Masterman, who was unknown to the electorate, to stand for the seat. He promptly lost it to the Conservatives.

In fact Masterman won the by-election, but had to fight another in the seat when he was promoted to the cabinet and lost that one.

So I turned instead to Percy Harris's memoirs Forty Years In and Out of Parliament and found confirmation that, as well as being comrades, he and Charles Masterman were rivals.

Percy Harris had been adopted as prospective candidate for Bethnal Green South West, where the sitting Liberal MP was expected to resign soon. Then Charles Masterman was disqualified as an MP elsewhere in London because of irregularities with his return of election expenses, and the national party saw a Bethnal Green by-election as an opportunity to get him back into the Commons.

Masterman won the nomination to fight the by-election, but Harris writes:

A number of angry Radicals walked out of the meeting, formed a Labour association, and proceeded to adopt a candidate.

For more about Charles Masterman's career, see an article of mine in Liberator.

Lord Bonkers' Diary: Pearly Kings and Queens and Sir Percy Harris

The end of another week at Bonkers Hall, though you can hear the old boy speak in Leicester next Friday. 

Sunday

My peers has been complaining about the catering at the House of Lords; one claims he was left “scarred” after his booking was cancelled and that his wife was “unable to lunch elsewhere” because she was wearing a tiara.

What nonsense! If the first Lady Bonkers and I found there was no table for us we would take a taxi to the East End and dine on pie, mash and liquor or jellied eels, all washed down with draughts of porter, before enjoying a good cockney knees up at the Crippled Canvasser (the haunt, incidentally, of the notorious gangster Violent Bonham-Carter).

My wife was even known to display the latest choreography of the Ballets Russes atop one of the tables there, while an audience of costermongers, chimney sweeps, Pearly Kings and Queens and Sir Percy Harris applauded her. But whatever turn the evening took, she wore her tiara throughout.

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

Earlier in Lord Bonkers' Diary...

Monday: In the shadow of Pendle Hill
Tuesday: Counting the teaspoons
Wednesday: Rabbit in the headlights
Thursday: A future leader of the Liberal Democrats?
Friday: The Great George Street rabbit
Saturday: Do you know the North Koreans?

Lord Bonkers' Diary: Violent Bonham-Carter's manor

Friday

To Whitechapel to conduct a party of tourists about the yards and courts of this insalubrious district. Today we are concerned neither with the crimes of Jack the Ripper (Nanny would often regale me with tales of them) nor with the life and times of Sir Percy Harris (the tour that brings the most visitors to our capital), but with the career of that notorious gangster Violent Bonham-Carter

I tell them of Bonham-Carter’s early struggles and patronage of Barbara Windsor (the black sheep of the royal family and, when they first met, a promising bantamweight) and take them for a drink at the Lame Deliverer – the very pub where Violent is said to have done away with the biscuit magnate Jack “The Hat” McVitie.

The landlord, who witnessed this notorious incident whilst enjoying a ginger beer in short trousers, is quick to point out that McVitie was widely thought to be “getting lairy” and to be “well out of order” – it was, after all, Violent’s manor. Whatever the rights and wrongs of the affair, a good time is had by all and I depart for St Pancras with enough in tips to keep me in Auld Johnston for another year.

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

Previously in Lord Bonkers' Diary

• Monday: "I Made Eastleigh Happen"
• Tuesday: The Cleggs in Switzerland
• Wednesday: Rutland six-card stud
• Thursday: Clegg on Milton Keynes

Searching for Paddy Logan: Discovering Harborough's Liberal history

I had an article under this title published in the Autumn 2010 issue of the Journal of Liberal History. It seems you can now freely download a PDF of it from the journal's website:

Logan returned as MP for Harborough at the second election of 1910, only to stand down again in 1916, thus landing the Liberals with a difficult by-election. Although there was a wartime truce with the Conservatives, the young Liberal candidate Percy Harris faced a strong challenge from an Independent with considerable press backing. He won, but lost the seat to the Conservatives in 1918 when, although a radical, he sided with Asquith and was thus refused the ‘coupon’ from the Lloyd George coalition. 

Harris went on to be an MP in the East End of London and a stalwart of the declining Parliamentary Liberal Party until 1945. He was recently revealed to be the greatgrandfather of the recently retired Liberal Democrat MP Matthew Taylor – a fact that surprised everyone except, I suspect, Lord Bonkers.

Nora Logan and Maud MacCarthy

Last summer I reported my discovery that Nora Logan, daughter of my hero J.W.  "Paddy" Logan, Liberal MP for Harborough  from 1891 to 1904 and 1910 to 1916, had been a suffragette and had gone to prison for her beliefs.

My original source was a debate in Hansard and the story is confirmed by her appearance (as "Norah Logan") on a Roll of Honour of Suffragette Prisoners 1905-1914 held by the Women's Library at London Metropolitan University.

So I set out to discover more about Nora Logan. It has nothing to do with the fight for women's suffrage, but I have made an interesting discovery.

The Sydney Mail for 12 February 1898 carries a story about Maud MacCarthy, a 13-year-old Australian violin prodigy who was then living and playing in England. Its writer ("Leipsic") says:

I have been privileged by her father Dr. Charles MacCarthy, to see a letter which is singularly interesting, which will grow in value year by year, and which is a perfect revelation of the writer. It is 200 pages long, this wonderful letter, arid was begun on September 2 and finished on November 5, 1897, and it is Maud MacCarthy’s record of her days during that period sent to her father. 

With the letter are three copies of a magazine, “ For Father, from the Editress.” The editress is Miss Maud MacCarthy, and the magazine is entitled “Maud’s Journal, a Monthly Magazine - Art, Literature, the Drama, &c." The imprint is “Nora Lgan, East Langton Grange, Market Harborough.” 

Miss Logan is described in the letter as “my greatest girl friend,” and she is the little daughter of the M.P. for Market Harboough. “ Maud’s Journal” is a record of Maud’s doings and views, of her visits to crncerts and picture galleries, of her little London garden, books she reads, and so on, with her views of them ... 

This is how she announces the journal to her father :- " I keep (for fun) a journal called ‘ Maud’s Journal.’ Nora Logan, my great friend, has a printing machine and prints it for me. She does not do it very regularly - in fact, though it is now nearly the middle of September, she has only done the March and April numbers."

And what happened to Maud MacCarthy? Wikipedia is your friend:

In 1905 she was forced to give up her ambitions as a concert soloist by the onset of neuritis and went to India as a companion of Annie Besant, where she studied Indian music, collecting manuscripts and instruments, learned Indian singing and also studied Indian mysticism. She returned to England in 1909 following the death of her younger brother. In 1911 she married William Mann, a fellow Theosophist and they had a daughter, Joan, in 1912. 

The marriage was short-lived, as Maud soon met and fell in love with the composer John Foulds in 1915. Despite strong opposition from family and friends, Maud and John Foulds left their respective spouses and lived together from 1918 onwards. They had two children, John Patrick (1916–2009) and Marybride (1922–1988). They finally married in 1932. She compiled the text for his World Requiem which was performed at the Albert Hall on four consecutive Armistice Nights between 1923 and 1926 ... 

In 1929, while living in the East End of London, they met a young man at a local social event whom they commonly referred to as 'The Boy'. A quiet yet powerful figure who worked at the local gas works, his real name was William (Bill) Coote. 'The Boy' almost instantaneously began to channel a group of beings known as 'The Brothers' who gave profound spiritual teachings through him for the next 26 years. 

Maud returned to India with John Foulds and William Coote in 1935 where 'The Brothers' continued their teachings through 'The Boy', making a profound impact on thousands of people in search of spiritual meaning. John Foulds died suddenly in 1939, and Maud married 'The Boy' in 1942.

She founded an ashram and published poetry under the name Tandra Devi. She took the name Swami Omananda Puri after her husband's death when she took sannyas (or renunciation of worldly life).

It was under this name that she published her autobiography of her experiences with 'The Boy' in the The Boy and the Brothers (London: Gollancz, 1959). A second book was posthumously published as Towards the Mysteries (London: Neville Spearman, 1968) which further expanded on The Brothers' teachings and message.

Maud MacCarthy died in 1967. Those interested in connections between Liberal MPs for Harborough and mysticism are referred to the career of Frieda Harris. The wife of Sir Percy Harris (who sat for Harborough between 1916 and 1918) and the great grandmother of Matthew Taylor (as was revealed a few years ago), she was a friend of Aleister Crowley and provided the designs for his Tarot deck.

Election Points: Nick Clegg, David Cameron and Percy Harris

My column from today's Liberal Democrat News.

Clegg-lite Cameron

A colleague at work made an intelligent remark the other day. He said something like: "David Cameron's problem is that Nick Clegg really is what Cameron has been pretending to be." I was impressed - even when he admitted that that he was reading it off Facebook.

Because whoever made that comment is right. When he became Conservative leader David Cameron saw at once what he had to be like to revive his party: modern, socially liberal, egalitarian, environmentally concerned.

He grasped it intellectually, but nothing in his background or his career before 2005 gives you any sense that that the real David Cameron is like that. By contrast, "modern, socially liberal, egalitarian, environmentally concerned" is a very good description of Nick Clegg.

And this need to be something he is not has been at the root of David Cameron’s troubles in this campaign. While Nick Clegg has simply been himself, Cameron has had to work hard to keep his inner Flashman in check. The poor man must be exhausted.

******

Longstanding and improbably attentive readers of this column will remember Sir Percy Harris. He was briefly MP for Harborough, an MP in the East End of London for much longer and was recently revealed to be the great-grandfather of Matthew Taylor.

Harris held Harborough for the Liberals at a difficult by-election in 1916. It was difficult because, though there was a wartime truce with the Conservatives, he faced a popular Independent, Thomas Gibson Bowles, who was being bankrolled by the press baron Lord Northcliffe.

Harris recalled the campaign in his memoirs:

The hoardings were covered with Daily Mail posters, “Buy Daily Mail and vote for Bowles,” and a special edition of the Daily Mirror, then in Northcliffe’s hands, was published and distributed free to the electors.

To outsiders it did not appear that I had a ghost of a chance, and the seat looked good as lost ... before ever the fight started. But I was young and energetic and kept to the front the query: “Were the electors to select their won M.P. or have one dictated to them by the Yellow Press?” and a very effective question it was.

And it may prove as effective in 2010 as it did in 1916.

Sandy Bruce-Lockhart's Liberal connections

The New Statesman website recently called me "the family historian of British politics". So I would be failing in my duty if I failed to note these connections.

Sandy Bruce-Lockhart, the Conservative politician who died on Thursday, was the great nephew of Sir Robert Bruce Lockhart. R. H. Bruce Lockhart (as he is better known) was a British agent in Russia during and after the Revolution and (or so the legend goes) was the lover of Moura Budberg. And she is Nick Clegg's great great aunt.

Better than that, according to R. H. Bruce Lockhart's Wikipedia page he was a friend of the occultist, Aleister Crowley. Crowley was also a friend of Frieda Harris (she painted a set of Tarot cards for him), the wife of Sir Percy Harris. Sir Percy was Liberal MP for Harborough 1916-8 and Bethnal Green South West 1922-45. As was recently revealed, he was also the great grandfather of Matthew Taylor, the current Lib Dem MP for Truro and St Austell.

I wrote about both the Budberg/Clegg and Harris/Taylor connections in a House Points column in March.

House Points: Press barons, by-elections and David Davis

My House Points column from today's Liberal Democrat News.

Incidentally, if Bowles was the grandfather of the Mitford sisters then he must be a kinsman of our own Rupert Redesdale.

The Yellow Press

The prospect of Kelvin Mackenzie standing in Haltemprice and Howden on behalf of Rupert Murdoch reminds Leicestershire historians of the Harborough by-election of 1916. There, though there was a wartime truce between the main parties, the Liberal candidate Percy Harris (now best remembered as Matthew Taylor’s great-grandfather) faced a formidable opponent financed by the press baron Lord Northcliffe.

Thomas Gibson Bowles was the illegitimate son of a cabinet minister, the founder of Vanity Fair and The Lady, and the grandfather of the Mitford sisters. He had sat for King’s Lynn as both a Liberal and a Conservative. He stood in Harborough to protest against the Asquith government’s conduct of the war.

Percy Harris wrote in his memoirs: "The hoardings were covered with Daily Mail posters, ‘Buy Daily Mail and vote for Bowles,’ and a special issue of the Daily Mirror, then in Northcliffe’s hands, was published and delivered free to the voters."

Many thought Harris had no chance, "But I was young and energetic and kept to the front the query: ‘Were the electors to select their own MP or have one dictated to them by the Yellow Press?’ and a very effective question it was." So effective that Harris won by 4000 votes.

Now Kelvin Mackenzie is backing away from the contest and David Davis may find himself fighting just the Miss Great Britain Party. But should he be facing a Liberal Democrat?

David Cameron's strategy since becoming Tory leader has been to convince the world you can be a reasonable person - concerned about the environment and civil liberties - and still vote Conservative.

You may say amounts to little more than being in favour of motherhood and apple pie. But as Danny Finkelstein has pointed out, the Tories spent a decade giving every impression of being against motherhood and apple pie. So this marks considerable progress for them.

Now David Davis has taken it into his head to resign and fight a by-election on civil liberties. And the Lib Dems have stood aside to let him make the issue entirely his own. It is hard to see how that will help us win or keep the support of the liberally minded people Cameron is wooing. We should be standing in the by-election.

When parties ignore elections, press barons move in

The talk of Kelvin MacKenzie (or Kelvin Calder MacKenzie as he would be known to the acting returning officer) standing against David Davis in his by-election reminds me of an earlier posting on this blog.

When the story broke that Matthew Taylor is the great-grandson of Sir Percy Harris, a long-serving Liberal MP, I wrote:

Sir Percy was first elected to the Commons for Harborough at a 1916 by-election. There was an official truce between the parties, but he had to overcome strong opposition from Thomas Gibson Bowles, an Independent candidate backed by Lord Northcliffe and the Daily Mail.

Bowles's campaign seems to have been concerned with criticism of the way the war was being fought. But the moral is clear.

When parties refuse to fight elections, press barons are only to happy to fill the vacuum. The Lib Dems should have put up a candidate in Haltemprice & Howden.

Lord Bonkers on Matthew Taylor, Nick Clegg and GQ

From Liberator 325.

Monday
Well, well, well. So the story has finally come out. I suppose it was inevitable.

The name "Percy Harris" will mean little to my younger readers, but he was quite the fellow in his day. Percy was elected in the Liberal interest at a by-election at Market Harborough during the Great War and was a frequent guest at the Hall in those dark days. The soundest of fellows, he stood by Asquith in 1918 and was thus denied the "coupon" by Lloyd George and his Tory allies, ensuring his defeat. He soon re-emerged as a Liberal MP in the East End and his strong following amongst the Pearly Kings and Queen (many of whom could drink more wine than he'd ever seen) ensured that he held that seat until 1945. The point of my story is that Percy’s granddaughter (a charming girl) fell pregnant during the louche days of the 1960s and a baby boy war born. Despite my strongest urgings, the family saw to it that he was adopted by a kindly scriptwriter and his wife and I assumed that was the last I would hear of the business.

A few years later, however, news reached me that a small boy had won the All Cornwall Primary Schools L. T. Hobhouse Recitation Contest at a preternaturally early age, and I soon guessed who the child he was. It was thus no surprise when, upon the sad and untimely death of David Penhaligon, Master Taylor (for it was he) emerged as the Liberal Democrat candidate for Truro. He soon proved a useful addition to our front bench (bedtime permitting). Now the tale is all over this morning’s newspapers; I spend the day at the Home for Well-Behaved Orphans refreshing my memory on the pedigrees of our young residents.

Tuesday
To Windsor for a banquet in honour of the French President M. Sarkozy. In the past I have found our Gallic cousins Rather Hard Work - one got the impression that General De Gaulle could never quite forgive Britain for liberating France - but the present incumbent proves a jolly little fellow. I am particularly taken by his wife, whom I rescue from the Duke of Edinburgh as is telling her (in more detail than is strictly necessary) the best way to disembowel a stag. We get on famously until the Prime Minister - a dour Scotsman by the name of Brown - muscles in on our conversation and tries to interest her in "post-neoclassical endogenous growth theory". I soon get my revenge: Brown asks me the way to the dining room and I send him off through the billiard room down the back stairs and out into the kitchen garden, before taking the delightful Mme Sarkozy into dinner on my arm. The Queen is amused.

Wednesday
I come across a magazine called GQ and, when I am told that the initials stand for Gentlemen’s Quarterly, I purchase a copy as it sounds My Sort Of Thing. Imagine my delight when, upon perusing the contents page, I find that there is an interview with out new leader. I order a pot of Earl Grey and sit down to read it, but I am soon disconcerted. I find that Clegg makes light of the notorious incident in which he set fire to a priceless collection of rare cacti -- I don’t know if they sell GQ in Rutland, but if they do it is lucky for Clegg that Meadowcroft’s choice of reading matter runs more to The Horticulturalist’s Journal. Then - dear God! - Clegg goes on to boast of the number of women he has slept with, which is something no gentleman should ever do. I certainly should not have done it myself when there was talk of my leading the Liberal Party - particularly if I thought there were any chance of the magazine falling into the hands of the first Lady Bonkers.

Thursday
To Brick Lane for the launch of the Liberal Youth, and not without a little trepidation as the name conjours up visions of footer bags, hearty folk singing and long hikes through the forests of the East End. I am thus reassured, when I arrive, to find a party in full swing and not a pair of lederhosen in sight.

Friday
I settle beside my hearth for a long awaited treat; a tumbler of Auld Johnston - that most prized of Highland malts - is at my elbow and a hardback copy of my old friend Ming Campbell’s memoirs is open on my lap. I begin reading and am fascinated to learn of Ming’s schooldays in Glasgow and his exploits as an Olympic sprinter, and chuckle at his anecdotes of life at the Edinburgh Bar. Yet when he turns to are former leader, poor Charles Kennedy, and his struggle with the demon drink, I find my attention wandering. When he turns to Kennedy again I almost nod off. When he turns to him a third time… I awake to find that the fire has burned low and my setters have put themselves to bed. In short, it is a fascinating read, but why Ming’s publishers insisted that he bore us all with constant talk of Kennedy I cannot imagine.

Saturday
To Rutland International Airport for the opening of its new terminal. Vast airships nuzzle the terminal tower having arrived from as far afield as Croydon, Königsberg, the Straits Settlements, Newfoundland and Bechuanaland; attentive footmen carry ones bags to ones Bentley; the Amy Johnson Bar dispenses pints of Smithson & Greaves Northern Bitter to all-comers. In short, it is everything a modern airport terminal should be. I hope the people at Heathrow will take notice.

Sunday
Lunch at the Hall with Matthew Taylor -- so much more enjoyable now that he is able to take wine with his meal. I tell him all about his great-grandfather and the Harborough by-election of 1916. I am never to blow my own trumpet, as my readers will know, but I trust that I give a fair account of my part in getting the Liberal vote out in Cranoe, Glooston and Carlton Curlieu.
Later a caller arrives with tidings of a small girl who has won the North Wales Paraphrase T. H. Green Without Falling Asleep Award for the second time at the age of eight. Here we go again.

Lord Bonkers was Liberal MP for Rutland South-West 1906-10. He opened his diary to Jonathan Calder.

Sir Percy Harris

The Parliament website has a short biography of Sir Percy Harris, who was Matthew Taylor's great-grandfather:

Harris; Sir; Percy, Alfred (1876-1952); 1st baronet, politician

Sir Percy Harris was educated at Harrow and at Trinity Hall, Cambridge. He was called to the bar by the Middle Temple, but never practised. Instead, he was for some years engaged in the prosperous wholesale and manufacturing firm of Bing, Harris, which his father had founded in New Zealand. Harris first helped to look after the London office, then spent three years in New Zealand. His lifelong interest in that country found expression in his book 'New Zealand and its Politics' (1909).

Harris returned to England in 1903. From then on, his main interest was in politics, where he took his stand firmly on the Liberal side. In 1907 he was elected a Progressive (Liberal) member of the London County Council for South-West Bethnal Green. He played an important part in the work of the Council, becoming chief Progressive whip in 1912 and deputy chairman in 1915-16. His book 'London and its Government' (1913, rewritten 1931) was considered a standard work of its kind.

Harris entered Parliament at a by-election at Market Harborough in 1916. His main work in the short remainder of the wartime Parliament was as a member of the select committee on national expenditure. In the election which followed the armistice in 1918 he suffered for his loyalty to Asquith, and the refusal of the "coupon" by the coalition leaders was sufficient to ensure his defeat.

In 1922 Harris returned to Parliament as member for South-West Bethnal Green. He was created a baronet in 1932; was chief Liberal whip in 1935-45; and in 1940, on Winston Churchill's recommendation, was sworn of the Privy Council. Harris held Bethnal Green in six successive general elections; for years his constituency was the only Liberal seat in or within a hundred miles of London.

You can also find photographs of the old boy here and here.

House Points: Moura Budberg and Percy Harris

Today's House Points column from Liberal Democrat News. You can find out more about Moura Budberg and Percy Harris on this blog.

Family stories

The banking system is collapsing around our ears. At times like this I find history a great consolation - particularly the family history of Liberal Democrat MPs.

I am indebted to Nick Clegg’s great great aunt Moura Budberg. This formidable lady knew all the leading Bolsheviks and was the lover of both Maxim Gorky and H. G. Wells. She was portrayed in the 1934 film British Agent, directed by Michael Curtiz who went on to make Casablanca.

But when she became a society hostess in London after World War II, Moura was thought to be a Soviet agent. The Moscow Embassy warned that she was a very dangerous woman who had once given Stalin an accordion. But MI5 should have listened to her: she told one of its agents that Anthony Blunt was a Communist years before he was exposed.

Moura died in 1974, late enough to have dandled the infant Nick on her knee. I am in her debt because, after writing about her for the New Statesman website last year, I was offered a regular column.

Readers of The Times will know another family story. Matthew Taylor was adopted as a baby and a few years ago decided to trace his birth mother. She turned out to be the granddaughter of a Liberal MP.

Sir Percy Harris was returned for Harborough - the constituency where I live - at a by-election in 1916. There was a wartime truce between the parties, but he still had to beat a strong Independent backed by the Daily Mail.

Although he was on the social reform wing of the party, Percy remained loyal to Asquith because he did not trust Lloyd George’s scheming. As a result he did not receive the Coupon at the 1918 general election and Harborough, which had been Liberal since 1891, was lost to the Tories.

In 1922 Percy was elected for Bethnal Green South West and was to keep the seat until 1945, serving as chief whip for many years. Even after 1945, he sat on London County Council. Percy Harris died in 1952, but his son Jack - Matthew’s grandfather - is alive in New Zealand aged 102.

So make room on the window ledge. There are many more stories to tell.