A recent comment, by John Fairhead, turns my thoughts to the entry barrier to London clubs. It was reported that Jeremy Paxman was blackballed from the Garrick a few years ago; “too pleased with himself”, apparently, but then he does have a lot to be pleased about.
Usually clubs are reticent on these matters. The Athenaeum does not boast that Jimmy Savile was a member – proposed by Cardinal Hume. Nor does it mention its only member, so far, to be hanged: Joachim von Ribbentrop. His son, Rudolf, was briefly educated at Westminster.
Brian Urquhart, a contemporary of his at Westminster, in his autobiography, A Life in Peace and War, describes him as being “doltish, surly and arrogant”. Urquhart remembers that Ribbentrop “arrived each morning in one of two plum-coloured Mercedes-Benz limousines….on arrival in Dean’s Yard, both chauffeurs would spring out, give the Nazi salute and shout “Heil Hitler!”
I was a contemporary at Eton of Prince Zera Yacob, grandson of the Emperor Haile Sellassie. We did remedial gym together. He was too stout and I was too skinny; neither of us changed shape perceptibly. His people did visit but he was not treated differently to the rest of us. That’s what you learn at an Engish public school and it’s such good training. Old Etonian, Prime Minister, Alec Douglas Home after being sacked as leader of the Conservative party served Edward Heath as Foreign Secretary. William Hague did likewise for David Cameron. As William Waldegrave, another Etonian, wrote – you seek the glittering prizes, but when they slip through your fingers you adopt Harrovian Winston Churchill’s dictum and just keep buggering on.
I wonder what David Cameron will do when he stands down in four or five years? He’s not a man to retire and keep bees on the South Downs like Sherlock Holmes. If he succeeds in keeping the UK in the EU a senior position in Europe surely awaits him.