A class act

‘I’m sorry to bother you, Peter, but you were a famously successful Leader of Their Lordships and I wondered whether you had any tips before I took it on.’

‘All you’ve got to remember is that you are the headmaster of a second-rate public school.’

Lord Carrington’s answer to my enquiry was entirely characteristic: funny, and flattering, as though he knew you would instinctively understand the joke. You and he, he implied, belonged in the same place.

It was a technique which he lavished with great success on those who worked for him. He was much loved in Their Lordships, at the Foreign Office and at the Ministry of Defence — and with reason. He was fun to work for and loyal to those who worked for him. He was widely admired outside his departments and lacked ‘side’. His myriad friends loved him for his company above all, but also for the lustre he brought to their circle.

It would be a mistake to assume that the charm was merely technique. His grand-father had been a celebrated spendthrift, not only getting through his own modest portion and more, but also his rich Australian wife’s. Peter’s father inherited his peerage and estates from his uncle Charlie Lincolnshire after a childhood in Australia. It was therefore perhaps understandable that both Peter and his father wanted to feel they belonged. So, although he was the ultimate insider, like many such he embodied a paradox: he was also an outsider.

Among those institutions which commanded his loyalty none was more important to Carrington than his regiment, the Grenadier Guards, and the second battalion in particular, which in the later stages of the second world war formed part of the Guards Armoured Division. My father and he disagreed over politics, particularly over Rhodesia, but nothing could break the bond of friendship forged in northern Europe in 1944 and 1945, united in their loyalty to their regiment and all its ranks.