The Fiery Chariot

At the end of his entertaining and thoughtful review [this Journal, iv (1974), 345–69, p. 362], Professor Berrington writes ‘if it is lonely at the top it is because it is the lonely who seek to climb’. But this is to miss a point that undermines the significance of Mrs Iremonger's thesis. It is indeed lonely at the top, and men who have already coped with loneliness are peculiarly fitted to bear the burdens of the Prince. Nor is there a contradiction between the public aloofness of prime ministers and their domestic felicity: those who are surrounded by a close and affectionate family and supported by a devoted wife can afford to do without the gratification of friendship in public life. They make good butchers. This suggests that the ideal characteristics required of prime ministers are not those put forward by Mrs Iremonger and apparently accepted by Professor Berrington. I recall, in loose translation, the words of a chronicler on King Stephen: ‘He was a mild man and good and did no justice’. The world has need of its bastards.