Those of us who understand these things...

Last evening Steve and I listed to a podcast of Edward Heath on Desert Island Discs.

'WHY on earth would you do that?'  I hear you ask.  Why indeed! I suppose for my generation of Conservatives he was a bogey-man; a sulking, brooding hulk who dared speak out against The Lady, who took us in the the EEC - the embodiment of everything we didn't like. Fair or not, that was the perception.

I forced myself to read his biography, The Course of my Life, and found it turgid. This simply reinforced my view. I downloaded his podcast to see if hearing his music and anecdotes would give me a better insight.  The following phrases have stuck in my mind;

"those of us who understand these things..."

"my opponents had no breadth of intellectual understanding to enable them to reach such opinions..."

"History will be my judge and jury..."

"I don't dislike Margaret Thatcher, particularly..."

At the end of the programme, my partner, Steve, who is completely disinterested in the politics of the 1970s and the ideological splits in the Conservative Party, said, "I've never heard a man so assured of his own self-importance."  Quite.