The King of the Badgers is a character in the Revd J.P. Martin's Uncle books, but the king who appears in the Bonkersverse - debating weighty matters underground - owes most to the badger in White's The Book of Merlyn. Let's hope Labour will reward his statesmanship by ending the badger cull.
Saturday
Feeling in need of a chinwag, I make my way to the royal chamber of the King of the Badgers, deep beneath the triumphal arch I had erected to mark the victory of Wallace Lawler in the Birmingham Ladywood by-election.
I find him in low spirits. His strategy of fighting the cull of his people through the courts while reining in the hotheads among the younger badgers has come to nothing. He is now inclined to let the young idea, as it were, shoot.
Soon we are talking of the beavers, and the King suggests their guild-like organisation comes from reading Hegel, whom we agree is fundamentally unsound and responsible for making T.H. Green’s writing Such Hard Work.
The King then tells me of a legend among the badgers that the Duke of Rutland’s Belvoir Castle is so pronounced because it was originally built by beavers, who were later driven from their home by usurping aristocrats. I shall make good use of this story next time I find myself talking to my new friends with the webbed back feet and scaly tails: it has The Ring Of Truth.
Lord Bonkers was Liberal MP for Rutland South West, 1906-10.
Earlier this week in Lord Bonkers' Diary
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