A DIFFERENT KIND OF WEATHER . by William Waldegrave . (Constable £20) At the start of the Falklands War in 1982, William Waldegrave, then a junior minister in Margaret Thatcher’s government, was standing in the division lobby of the House of Commons when he saw Thatcher and her entourage of ‘toadies’ marching towards him. He felt compelled to say something, so, with the U.S. Secretary of State Alexander Haig at the time trying to broker a British ‘sell-out’ to the Argentinians, he asked: ‘Where do the Americans stand, Prime Minister?’ ‘I don’t know, William,’ came the immediate reply. ‘But I know where they are going to stand.’ Would that David Cameron could deal so unequivocally with the White House, but then none of Thatcher’s successors have, least of all the pusillanimous Tony Blair, whom Waldegrave compares with Ted Heath. Margaret Thatcher (right) is once said to have fought off Norman Tebbit (left) with a snarling remark in Waldegrave's defence . This is surprising, for Waldegrave was a passionate Heath loyalist before transferring his allegiance to Thatcher. But he is surely right when he asserts that Heath’s great disappointment in life was that the patriotic, liberal Conservative Party in which he believed so fervently — ‘he and it were family’ — did not return his devotion. And in that respect Waldegrave is reminded of Blair, who ‘genuinely thought — and thinks — that he created a family called New Labour which loved him’. In fact it was success that New Labour loved, not Blair. This absorbing memoir contains some choice gossip as a counter-balance to Waldegrave’s insightful political analysis. Getting back to Heath, he recalls one of the old curmudgeon’s dinner parties — ‘not occasions of much merriment’ — at which Emma Soames gamely tried to enliven proceedings with an anecdote about her brother Nicholas, who had just been selected to contest a tough seat in Glasgow. At a raucous selection meeting, very unlike anything in the Home Counties, the prospective MP had been grasped by the lapels and asked, ‘Are ye married?’ Around Heath’s table, the diners waited expectantly for the end of an amusing story, but Soames suddenly and mystifyingly stopped speaking. Driving her home later, Waldegrave asked if she’d forgotten the punchline? ‘No,’ she said. ‘I was on autopilot and got that far without remembering that after Nicholas admitted to being unmarried, the response was: “Och, not another Tory poofter!” ’ She hadn’t wanted to offend her illustrious host, whose sexuality was always the subject of speculation — though Waldegrave adds that in relation to the Scotsman’s allegation, it was not ‘as far as anyone I ever knew could discover, true’. Waldegrave’s own background differs markedly from those of two of his Tory heroes, Heath and Thatcher, if rather less from that of another, the grouse-shooting enthusiast Harold Macmillan, whom he recalls silencing another dinner party, this time at Waldegrave’s own house, by turning to his neighbour and declaring: ‘Such a pity they abolished the gold sovereign, you know. What does one tip one’s loader?’ Waldegrave's privileged background was very different to that of his Tory hero, Margaret Thatcher (pictured) The seventh and youngest child of an earl, directly descended from King James II, Waldegrave is himself the very definition of a toff. And he grew up privileged not just socially and materially but also intellectually. His parents’ friends included the philosopher Isaiah Berlin. He was educated at Eton, Oxford and Harvard. His accent alone opened doors, as he made his way in the world in the Sixties. As a scruffy, long-haired student, he once tried to check in for the night at the Great Western Hotel at Paddington, admitting that he had no money on him but would pay once they sent him the bill. The cut-glass vowels, and his explanation that there had once been a locomotive on the Great Western line named after his family — The Earl Waldegrave — secured him the room. For those of us who do not come from such lofty beginnings, there is something beguiling yet also appalling about the upper-class milieu Waldegrave describes so well. After his engagement to Victoria Rothschild ended — her father, the political power-broker Victor Rothschild, had made a protégé of him — he found a letter to his own father from a fellow Wykehamist, stating: ‘You must be pleased to see the back of the Jewess.’ From an early age, Waldegrave’s ambition was to rise to high political office. The path ahead looked gilded when he became MP for Bristol West in 1979, and Thatcher did eventually make him Health Secretary. She liked and rated him, and once fought off a snarling Norman Tebbit on his behalf. From an early age, Waldegrave's ambition was to rise to high political office, Thatcher (pictured) liked him and eventually made him Health Secretary . As Britain’s representative on the European Environment Council in 1984, Waldegrave had tried to force British Leyland into taking the dangers of pollution more seriously. This enraged Tebbit, who savaged him during a meeting at No 10 for being a toff, and knowing nothing of the concerns of working folk at British Leyland. Thatcher listened, and then ‘began to purr dangerously’. With magnificent condescension, she explained to Tebbit that she was a chemist, and that it was he, not Waldegrave, who did not understand these matters. Bit by bit, she dismantled Tebbit’s case until he had no argument left. ‘I said absolutely nothing,’ Waldegrave writes. ‘I just sat there, terrified, while these great animals fought over me. ‘As we all filed out, she grasped my elbow, quite hard, and said: “I always look after my young people, William.” ’ But Thatcher’s patronage wasn’t enough. Gradually it occurred, if at first only to him, that he would never reach the top of the greasy pole. He was instinctively a loyalist, and didn’t always back the right horse. Yet this elegantly-written volume is not really an exercise in score-settling, as so many political memoirs are. It is more a reflection on a fascinating life than an account of it, and Waldegrave is an astute observer of the political animal, noting that the current Mayor of London has more than a little in common with the late Willie Whitelaw. ‘A subtle and intelligent man, he knew that the British do not like their politicians to appear too clever,’ he writes of Whitelaw. ‘His deliberate comical obfuscations predated Boris Johnson’s by 30 years, and were a delight.’ On the whole, Waldegrave wears his social pedigree about as lightly as he can, while exploiting it to shed light, sometimes alarmingly, but also hilariously, on upper-crust ways. While holidaying with the Rothschilds in Barbados, he visited rich socialites Ronnie and Marietta Tree, who ‘along with their supermodel daughter Penelope (who could water-ski on bare feet) occupied the classical house at Heron’s Bay. ‘There Tull the butler was alleged once to have silenced a boring guest at Rothschild’s request by means of powdered Nembutal in his bullshot’. Many people emerge heroically from Waldegrave’s engrossing reminiscences — not least the great love of his life, his cookery teacher wife Caroline — but possibly none more so than Tull the butler.
Waldegrave grew up privileged not just socially but intellectually . He was a Heath loyalist before transferring to his loyalties to Thatcher . From an early age, his ambition was to rise to high political office . Thatcher liked him and eventually made him Health Secretary .