I do like it when I find an interesting discarded section of a newspaper that I haven’t read: the Friday film and music supplement or the Saturday review from the Guardian for example. I didn’t notice it at the time, but last Saturday The Guardian printed a review by Douglas Hurd of a book about Margaret Thatcher written by Simon Jenkins. I suppose it could have been a review by George Galloway of a book about Tony Benn written by Madeleine Bunting.

To my dismay I found myself agreeing with some of the claims made by Hurd and/or Jenkins in the first quarter of the article. Then their patrician drawl of unsupportable assertion began to fill my mind’s ear and my breathing resumed.

(The same section of the paper also carried an ad for the latest Ruth Rendell:

A TRAGIC DEATH HIDES A WEB OF FAMILY DECEIT IN THE WATER’S LOVELY

Ruth Rendell writes about “a tragic death” revealing “a web of family deceit”? Whodathunkit?)