Lord Bonkers Diary: The only estate in England with a breeding population of corkindrills

Liberator 425 has been posted on the magazine's website in time for the Liberal Democrat Conference. You can download it free of charge.

With more Lib Dem MPs than ever, we have four writing for Liberator about how they see their role and what the party should do next.

That's the good news. The bad news is that it's time to begin another week with Lord Bonkers.

Monday

You find me seated in a deckchair, surveying my gardens and listening to the midsummer hum of insects (and to Meadowcroft grumbling as he works). Life is good: Freddie and Fiona are leaving me in peace (no more demands that I go canvassing in St Kilda) and Matron and the Well-Behaved Orphans have departed for their accustomed holiday at Trescothick Bay in Cornwall. 

There is only one fly in this fragrant ointment: a colony of beavers has turned up and is making free with my demesne. Take this lake I am sitting beside: it was, until last Thursday, my croquet lawn. Why, they’ve even rigged themselves up a jacuzzi! 

Now, I’m all in favour of rewilding – this is, I believe, the only estate in England with a breeding population of corkindrills – but one does like to be asked. Yet when I went to have it out with the beavers, they insisted I speak only to their elected spokesman, and his answer to everything was to say he had “the backing of the entire lodge” and refuse to give an inch.

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