Mark Mason

Coming second

Who was the second prime minister? Everyone knows Robert Walpole was the first. Firsts get all the fame and glory. But what about the poor seconds, elbowed into the shadows of history? Isn’t it time they were given some love? Step forward, the Earl of Wilmington, PM from 1742 to 1743. Let us celebrate the fact that his country house in Warwickshire appeared as a monastery in Carry On Camping — and was the inspiration for Croft Manor, Lara’s childhood home in the Tomb Raider games.

Likewise, no one knows very much about James Garfield, the second US president to be assassinated. I certainly didn’t until I researched him for my new book, The Book of Seconds. I didn’t know that he could write in Latin with one hand and, simultaneously, in Greek with the other. I didn’t know that he took weeks to die: a bullet remained lodged in his body, and Alexander Graham Bell invented a metal detector to find it. He failed, but only because the doctors incorrectly thought the bullet was on Garfield’s right side and wouldn’t let Bell use it on the left.

The ultimate second is Apollo 12. Once Neil and Buzz had done their thing, no one cared about Pete Conrad and Alan Bean. But the pair were far more interesting than their predecessors. On the way to the moon they danced weightlessly to ‘Sugar Sugar’ by the Archies. Alan Bean left his silver Nasa badge on the lunar surface, knowing his mission had earned him a gold one. Pete Conrad ended up doing an American Express advert based on the fact that no one recognised him. It made him more famous than he’d become by walking on the moon.

Some seconds seem particularly unfair.

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