An odd connection

[chickenfeet]

According to the introduction to the edition of John Buchan's The House of the Four Winds that I am currently reading Buchan was quite good friends with Clydeside labour leader and ILP MP Jimmy Maxton.  Buchan and Maxton were, of course, both MPs and both Scots but their politics were so different that friendship does seem a stretch.  Still connections are connections and while my connection with Buchan doesn't extend beyond reading his books and once or twice drinking beer in the Lord Tweedsmuir pub in Tweed, Ontario I do have a slightly closer connection with Jimmy Maxton having once met his widow, Annie, at an ILP conference in Scarborough.

Comments

[shezan]

That is amusing.

Buchan's second son William was a wartime friend of my father's in London and in South-East Asia, and I remember meeting his son Jamie the novelist in Florence in the 70s, when each of us was on a university trip & our fathers thought we might get along. We had tea at the Villa Finaly where my French group was staying - he must have been 18 and apologised for not having finished reading La Recherche du Temps Perdu & "only" having reached La Prisonnière. At which stage I decided he was beyond my touch. We never met again, even though at times we worked for the same outfits, so I still can't decide whether he was just showing off.

(And odd friendships in parliamentary life have always existed, I think. My SFIO grandfather was very good friends with Philippe Barrès, son of Maurice and also an MP.)

[legionseagle]

I'm reminded of the newly invited MP arriving in Westminster and being shown the chamber by an older MP who was mentoring him. They looked across at the other benches and the young MP said, "Oh, yes, that's where the enemy sit." The older MP shook his head. "No, that's where Her Majesty's Loyal Opposition sit." He turned round and pointed at the Government benches. "Back up there, that's where you'll find the enemy."

The most extraordinary example of which is the Rev Ian Paisley and Martin McGuinness apparently being referred to as "the chuckle brothers" in Stormont, because they were always laughing at each other's jokes.

[chickenfeet]

That reminds me of the possibly apocryphal Bevin/Bevan story where someone is reported to have said to Ernest that "Aneurin is his own worst enemy" to which the reply, apparently, was "Not while I'm alive he ain't"

[oursin]

In The Power-House, Leithen's sidekick is a Labour member: 'for all his failings in politics, I knew no-one I would rather have with me to go tiger-shooting'.

[legionseagle]

There's also many of the minor characters in Mr Standfast, including Lancelot the pacifist with the elastic principles (minesweeping I can quite see as entirely compatible with pacifism, but carrying messages asking for reinforcements seems over the line, personally) who are highly sympathetic and definitely towards the communist end of the Left.

It's a bit double edged, talking about which politician you'd rather have with you in a tiger shoot. I mean, I wouldn't go tiger shooting in the first place, but if the point is "which politician would you rather have as a human shield between you and an enraged big cat?" it's Boris Johnson all the way.

[chickenfeet]

"which politician would you rather have as a human shield between you and an enraged big cat?"

I think also, the price of goats being what it is, one might think about which one would prefer to use as bait.