Monday
The obituaries will tell you how Sir Paddy Ashplant fused the community politics promoted by the Association of Liberal Councillors with his expertise in jungle warfare to win a string of by-elections and raise the Liberal Democrats from the ruins of Steel’s grand strategy.
What they will not tell you is how my domestic staff loved his visits (Cook would frequently announced that he made her “come over all unnecessary”); how he stood his round in the Bonkers’ Arms and entertained the locals with his favourite joke; how he allowed the Well-Behaved Orphans to question him for hours about his time in the Special Boat Service (they were always particularly interested in the escape techniques he had been taught lest he be captured by the enemy).
We know that because such have been there will be such again, though not for us. I fear his passing cast something of a pall over Christmas here at the Hall, but we must carry on the fight for Liberalism because it is What He Would Have Wanted.
Lord Bonkers was Liberal MP for Rutland South West, 1906-10.
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