Kindred spirits

There’s a game you have to play at the BBC and Jeremy Paxman plays it very well — which is why he is currently still the most famous Old Malvernian after C.S. Lewis whereas I’m way down the list at maybe fourth, fifth or sixth. The rules are very simple: no matter how great your sympathies secretly might be towards the British Empire, Tory values, climate-change scepticism, Israel, the idea of national sovereignty, Margaret Thatcher or any other manifestation of what the BBC would consider WrongThink, you must suppress, suppress, suppress, using the mental equivalent of that spiked metal ring...