James Delingpole James Delingpole

A few of my favourite things

It’s that time of year again when I put aside my wonted snark and share with you a few of my brown-paper–packages-tied-up-with-string moments so as to gladden the heart and remind ourselves that life is about more, oh so much more, than Theresa May’s crappy Brexit deal…

Best friends: Michael and Sarah Gove. Many harsh words have been said about Michael and Sarah — many of them, at least in Michael’s case, by me. But the point about good friends — even when they betray every-thing you hold dear and sell your country down the river like some back-stabbing traitor — is that you love them, warts and all, and stick by them. Sarah is the most brilliant and generous host in Christendom. The Gove, despite having a quite important day job, is always there for me at a moment’s notice when, say, I’ve got a speech to give at the Durham Union and I need it dictated to me on the train up, pronto. Gove is a mensch.

Best summer: Will there ever be a summer as gloriously, consistently balmy within our lifetimes? Happily, the answer’s probably yes. According to the brilliant blogger Paul Homewood, there have since the Central England Temperature record began in 1659 been only ten summers with an average temperature above 17˚C and six of these have occurred since (the hottest) 1976. I love hot summers, don’t you? We didn’t even have to go abroad this year: Salcombe was like Salerno. Hurrah for global warming!

Best poem: Varies, obviously, depending on which one I have most recently learned by heart. But Thomas Gray’s ‘Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard’ really has to be up there, doesn’t it? Gray was such a perfectionist (or lazy-arsed bastard) that he only published 13 poems in his lifetime. But what quality! His gift for compression and phrase-making is all but matchless:

Brushing with hasty steps the dews away

To meet the sun upon the upland lawn.

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