Who is Douglas Hurd?
The question is easier to answer in terms of background than of foreground, where multiple identities perplex. Is the notably unstuffy Hurd, one of the best political novelists since Disraeli, the proud holder of the Alan Clark seal of approval as `delightful: clever, funny, observant, dryly cynical’, the same being as the authoritarian personality whom Stuart compares to a village headmaster? And what has the Christian, churchgoing Hurd, with a strongly Christian wife, in common with either? Do any of these connect with a public career based on sustained competitiveness and equally sustained lack of originality? Here Belloc’s lines might provide a fitting epitaph: . . . he resides in Affluence still, To show what Everybody might Become by SIMPLY DOING RIGHT. Not that Hurd had much alternative other than to excel. His family were not out of the top drawer. They had neither land, nor money nor connections. They differed from other middle-class families only in that the father and grandf
