10th June, 2005

Last reference to Lord Rosebery, I promise. I meant to include it last Friday, but when it came to putting fingers to the keyboard, although I knew there was something I wanted to tell you, I couldn't for the life of me remember what it was. That evening I sneaked a few holes of golf in and walking down the 8th fairway, I found myself whistling a tune. Bingo...it came to me....there's a story in Rosebery's biography that when he was Foreign Secretary, overseeing Queen Victoria's global possessions, a junior colleague recalled that Rosebery would be found in his study, ploughing through the Red Boxes, humming "Rule Britannia" to himself. And there's me, a century later, doing the same, just before I snap hook a 3 iron into the bushes.