Turn Right at the Spotted Dog by Jilly Cooper

Author:Jilly Cooper [Jilly Cooper]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Random House

Lord Hailsham

THIS PIECE WAS written in May 1985, when there was some speculation that Lord Hailsham should be replaced as Lord Chancellor by a younger man. Happily he survived this minor storm and was only replaced after the Election in June 1987. Happily, since then he has has also remarried.

‘Forgive me if I don’t get up,’ said Lord Hailsham. ‘My leaping days are over.’ Not so Spotty, his Jack Russell puppy, who, totally unawed by his master’s splendid office in the House of Lords, leapt all over the desk, scattering papers, bulldog clips and white quill pens.

‘I am no good at training dogs,’ said Lord Hailsham. ‘My spaniel, Mr Jones, always sang with excitement when I took him shooting and never passed his O levels retrieving. Sit, Spotty.’

Spotty took no notice.

‘Only Maggie can control him,’ sighed the Lord Chancellor. ‘A word from her, a steely look, and Spotty capitulates: he recognises the ultimate authority.’ Envisaging a thrilling new Barbara Woodhouse career for Mrs Thatcher, I said I didn’t know she liked dogs.

‘No, no, Maggie my driver. The PM is always Margaret.’

His eyes creased with laughter. He is a huge tease.

The round face, full of wisdom and kindness, has a beaky nose, pixie ears, and rather wild wrinkles on his forehead, as though the wind had blown them askew. Like a garden gnome rigged out for town, he wore striped trousers and a black coat, softened by a scarlet handkerchief and a scattering of dog hairs. Nearly seventy-eight, his mind is as needle-sharp as Spotty’s teeth.

As Lord Chancellor heading a ten-thousand strong department, he runs the courts, appoints judges, and has instigated many reforms in civil law. As a senior minister, he also provides one of the few voices of distinction and scholarship in the cabinet. Mrs Thatcher not only finds his waspish humour invaluable for pricking the bubbles of her more pompous colleagues, but is also reassured by his wealth of experience.

He is unshocked, for example, by the increased thuggery in the House, Mr Kinnock calling Mrs T a twister, David Owen being howled down by Labour yobbos.

‘Politics was far rougher before World War One. Feeling ran much higher. Asquith was repeatedly howled down, and I remember my uncle telling me how Ronnie Macneil, who later became Lord Cushendon, hurled Erskine May across the House.’

‘Who was he?’

‘He was a very large book,’ said Lord Hailsham kindly.

The pedagogic precision is always tempered by dramatic pauses and great wheezes of laughter like a huge bellows.

Quintin Hailsham was born into an intensely political and legal family. His beautiful American mother was a judge’s daughter. His brilliant lawyer father went straight on to the front bench, as Bonar Law’s attorney general, became Lord Chancellor and was strongly tipped as a future leader.

Little Quintin’s now famous qualities of unassailable loyalty and eruptive temper had established themselves by the age of two when his nanny was sacked for hitting him.

‘I was devoted to Nanny, even if she did hit me. When my mother – whom I

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