Although Dunleer in Co. Louth is only a village it had on the main street a department store, Matthews of Dunleer, that stocked furniture, carpets, clothes and so on. It’s on the same site today, now specialising in carpets and flooring, and has other branches around the country.
The menswear department, patronised by my grandfather, was run by Mr Bellew, although Mr Matthews himself would usually be on hand for a chat. His son, Thomas, owns the business today. Clothes were always sold On Approval, or On Appro, meaning that if you changed your mind after you had bought something you could take it back. It seems to me that Theresa May has got her new Foreign Secretary On Appro. Boris will have to mind his Ps and Qs or she will send him back to the back benches. If he slips up, which let’s face it seems pretty likely, she will not give him another chance.
The role of the Foreign Secretary has changed significantly in the last half century. Alec Douglas-Home was the very embodiment of a Foreign Secretary. He went to Eton and Christ Church, Oxford, where he got a Third in modern history in 1925. He is the only British Prime Minister to have played first-class cricket: he played for Oxford, Middlesex and the MCC. In 1924 he played for the MCC in South Africa on a team that included my grandmother’s brother, Tommy Jameson. Tommy was a remarkable sportsman, if I may digress, playing in 124 first-class matches and playing rackets and squash at a similarly high level.
Alec Douglas-Home served as Foreign Secretary under Heath. He bore Heath no grudge for supplanting him as leader of the Conservatives. He was quietly spoken, extremely modest and unmistakably an aristocrat, qualities only so far seen once more when Lord Carrington held the post. Douglas-Home had an endearing habit of not unpacking his suitcase when he lived in Downing Street. Seeing it reminded him that he would soon be going back to his estate in Northumberland. It reminds me of the sentiments expressed by Ping, Pang and Pong in Puccini’s Turandot. He also had the misfortune to fall down the stairs when he was leaving a double-decker bus in central London. Remarkable that he was able to travel on public transport as a matter of course and not as a publicity stunt.
After A D-H left office in 1974 there were some buffoons like George Brown, Robin Cook and Jack Straw. I don’t suppose Boris will be any worse than them but I very much doubt that he will have as much dignity and aristocratic sang-froid as A D-H. Today the Foreign Secretary’s role in international affairs has been diminished by video conferencing and the ability of Prime Ministers to travel all over the world. Tony Blair usurped the role of his Foreign Secretaries and this has continued to this day. So Boris gets a Top Job but it is nowhere as important as it used to be in the days of Palmerston’s gunboat diplomacy in the 19th century, something that we can be grateful for.
I am no fan of the fans of Boris, but the man himself – the chancer-in-chief – may have very great merits alongside his buffoonery. I agree that he is on appro in this Cabinet, and that his Great Office of State has been diminished of late. And yet, it just about clings on to its old symbolism and is thus a perfect perch from which this fluffy, bulky fledgling can soar and prove himself a PM in-waiting, or from which he can crash and burn like one of those pier-end flying machine summer stunt larks. Just another of Mrs M’s opening flurry of great touches.
You have forgotten Douglas Hurd, Lord Hurd of Westwall. Educated at Eton and Trinity College, Cambridge he served as Foreign Secretary for 6 years under Lady Thatcher and John Major. A former diplomat, suspected MI6 operative, he was the very embodiment of an English Grandee.
Boris Johnson could well turn out to be a remarkable choice, or not, but it might be a good idea if he visited Matthews of Dunleer for the odd suit on Appro as he might be returning them next week.
A D-H regretted that he did not work harder at Oxford, writing in his memoirs, The Way the Wind Blows, that ” If only I had learned and applied the secret of early- morning working which I adopted later in life, I could have improved upon the Honours degree of a Third which I eventually acquired”. A moral here, surely.
Did your great uncle tour South Africa as well as South America as A D-H also wrote in his memoirs that ” Before deciding on a career I went on a cricketing tour of South America, captained by Plum Warner, the greatest diplomat of all the cricketers. We were a pretty good side with G.O.Allen… and amongst others….Tommy Jamieson [sic] from Ireland….”.
Quite possibly South America should have read South Africa as an M.C.C. tour of South America in the 1920s seems unlikely.
He, Tommy Jameson, toured both South Africa and South America in the 1920s.I may have made a mistake and A D-H was on the South American tour not the South African. I will write more about Tommy Jameson in a few days.