If this court case had gone ahead, Lord Bonkers would have got to know them better than I did.
Saturday
I still maintain that my great grandfather was fully justified in his decision to call out the militia to quell the Stilton Riots of 1819, but my sympathies are instinctively with those campaigning to widen the franchise. Why, I sat through Ken Loach’s Peterloo the other day, even though I generally find his stuff Rather Hard Work.
It happens that in the early 1970s that I myself wrote a musical called Peterloo! – I added the exclamation mark having noticed the success of Lionel Bart’s Oliver! some years before.
My show, it has to be admitted, was not a great success, but I was proud of its theme song. Imagine my fury when I travelled to Brighton to attend the Eurovision Song Contest a year or two later, only to find that song had been stolen by a bunch of Swedes. They tried to hide their plagiarism by changing its title to Waterloo, but I was not fooled for a moment.
I consulted my solicitors, but eventually decided not to pursue an action.
Lord Bonkers was Liberal MP for Rutland South West, 1906-10.
Earlier this week...
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