I'm more or less halfway in the Alan Clark Diaries. It was among a box of books I took away from a pre-garage sale browse just before Christmas. I keep it in the downstairs toilet (where else?) & dip into it while engaged on pressing matters.

It's rather fun to read - seeing the underbelly of a period I lived through & loathed. And now and again names pop up of fathers of people I either knew at school or went to university with (usually accompanied by derogatory remarks).

I'm pretty sure I'd loathe Clark in person but on the page he's - dare I admit it - verging on the sympathetic. The kinds of nonsense, incompetence & in-fighting he describes & despises I witness going on around me. Might we not be so very different (discounting the houses, vintage cars & compulsive philandering)? It was Ben who confessed one day back in Leeds that go far enough to the Left & you just might come out the other side as a Tory Anarchist. A point to ponder.