Musings from the Merse
Sunday, April 22, 2007
This is Sir Alec Douglas Home's statue at the entrance of his former
estate at the Hirsel, Coldstream. Huttonian's former boss and one of the best boss the Foreign Office has ever had. Sadly too obviously 'aristocratic' to succeed as a politician at a time that it was increasingly necessary to have a good media-especially TV-persona
In my time at the UN he used to give the UK Foreign policy speech during the opening days of the General Assembly-the plenary sessions usually attended by Foreign Ministers and the (very) odd Head of State. We officials in the UK Mission to the UN used to write his-he would look at it and then rewrite it in his own inimitable style-quite often with his own interpretation of British policies-some times somewhat unorthodox if not down right heritical. With help from highheidyins in London ww would persaude him to accept the orthodox version which we would rewrite a few minutes before he went up to the rostrum to avoid any last minute changes. To no avail.
As he left the OK seat he would carefully put his prepared polished pompous script into his left hand pocket and produce his own out of the right-tool ate to stop him then.
No harm done as no one would be bothered to listen to yet another boring world view given to an organisation which much of the West, at least, derided and the press (if any) would use our hand out rather than pay attention to his words. But it made him feel better and we did not grudge such a lovely man his little victory.
A sharp eyed bloggee has noted that Sir A has buttoned up his jacket a la distaff. The sculptor (this was done after Sir Alec's death)
and presumably did not look at the photograph closely enough. Or perhaps it was a little joke. Like when Harold Wilson rather contemptously referred to him as the '14th Earl of Home' to which the response was ' no worse than being the 14th Mr Wilson'
A Man of Statute as one Coldstreamer called him. Hence the title
estate at the Hirsel, Coldstream. Huttonian's former boss and one of the best boss the Foreign Office has ever had. Sadly too obviously 'aristocratic' to succeed as a politician at a time that it was increasingly necessary to have a good media-especially TV-persona
In my time at the UN he used to give the UK Foreign policy speech during the opening days of the General Assembly-the plenary sessions usually attended by Foreign Ministers and the (very) odd Head of State. We officials in the UK Mission to the UN used to write his-he would look at it and then rewrite it in his own inimitable style-quite often with his own interpretation of British policies-some times somewhat unorthodox if not down right heritical. With help from highheidyins in London ww would persaude him to accept the orthodox version which we would rewrite a few minutes before he went up to the rostrum to avoid any last minute changes. To no avail.
As he left the OK seat he would carefully put his prepared polished pompous script into his left hand pocket and produce his own out of the right-tool ate to stop him then.
No harm done as no one would be bothered to listen to yet another boring world view given to an organisation which much of the West, at least, derided and the press (if any) would use our hand out rather than pay attention to his words. But it made him feel better and we did not grudge such a lovely man his little victory.
A sharp eyed bloggee has noted that Sir A has buttoned up his jacket a la distaff. The sculptor (this was done after Sir Alec's death)
and presumably did not look at the photograph closely enough. Or perhaps it was a little joke. Like when Harold Wilson rather contemptously referred to him as the '14th Earl of Home' to which the response was ' no worse than being the 14th Mr Wilson'
A Man of Statute as one Coldstreamer called him. Hence the title
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