Simon Hoggart enjoys Alan Beith's memoirs

In his Saturday column for the Guardian Simon Hoggart wrote of the pleasure he takes in reading the memoirs of our more obscure politicians.

Discussing Alan Beith's A View from the North he said:

Sir Alan Beith, the former deputy leader of the Liberal Democrats, has almost nothing to say about the departures of Jeremy Thorpe, Charles Kennedy and Menzies Campbell, though each one was fascinating in its own way.

But his description of the deaths of both his first wife and his son is deeply moving, and you'd never find that in a more overblown memoir.