Sir Alec Douglas Home.

                                          

I was recently going through a list of British Prime Ministers, and found myself compelled to stop when I came to Sir Alec. He was always something of an enigma in British politics. After his brief term of office he seemed to simply fade away; perhaps that it something that all ex-PM's should do.

Wiki describes a polite unremarkable man who worked tirelessly for his country. Cyril Connolly, a school contemporary of Douglas Home's, described the young Alec thus....

A votary of the esoteric Eton religion, the kind of graceful, tolerant, sleepy boy who is showered with favours and crowned with all the laurels, who is liked by the masters and admired by the boys without any apparent exertion on his part, without experiencing the ill-effects of success himself or arousing the pangs of envy in others. In the 18th century he would have become Prime Minister before he was 30. As it was, he appeared honourably ineligible for the struggle of life.,

The most poignant bits of his biography reveal that Sir Alec played a bit of above-average Cricket for his school, received a rather poor degree from Oxford, and has the honour of having served as Prime Minister for just under one year; almost a record.

Part of my fascination with Sir Alec is that his brother, the playwright William Douglas Home, lived in a house opposite the entrance to my people's house in West Chiltington Sussex. Unknown to us at the time, it is where he used to 'entertain' Princess Margaret. I never actually saw the man; his house always seemed empty.

Sir Alec was the archetypal 'Gentleman Politician'; quiet, unassuming, and dedicated to his cause. I suppose he could be summed-up as having been somewhat ineffectual, but a charming person. He died back in 1995; no fuss was made.


p.s. He also happens to be the spitting image of my old school housemaster, David Scott, who died very recently. David was equally 'Gentlemanly'. RIP David Scott.