Odd boy out, p.44
Odd Boy Out, page 44
Taylor, Elizabeth (actress) 134
Taylor, Elizabeth (novelist) 270
Teddy Bear Museum 83, 118, 410
television 2–3, 242, 375; children’s programmes 103–4; GB’s work in 348, 352–3, 363, 369, 372, 398
Thatcher, Margaret 335, 364
Theander, Jens 392
Thomas Cook & Son 252–3, 375
Thompson, John Hunter 55
Thompson, Kay 97
Thorpe, Jeremy 330
Tiger Bay 163, 169–70
Today programme 356, 381
Todd, Mike 134–5
Tom Sawyer 172, 174
Tomorrow Today 266, 272
Torry, Peter 305
tortoises 44, 49
Trafalgar Square, Fourth Plinth 415
Trevor, William 323
The Trials of Oscar Wilde 197
Twelfth Night 189, 327
Twiggy 288, 344
Tynan, Kenneth 348–51, 418
Uncle Vanya 230, 320, 324, 412–13
Valk, Frederick 152–3
vegetarianism 299, 388
Victoria and Albert Museum 126
Victorian era 46–7, 141–2, 194, 316
Vietnam War 278, 292
vitality 137–8
Volkswagen Beetle 107
A Voyage Round My Father 417
Waldegrave, William 300, 330
Warner, David 230, 273
Watch with Mother 103
Waterhouse, Keith 399
Welch, Raquel 343
Wetherby Place 99–100
Whack-O! 150, 325–6
Whips’ Office 264–5
Whitehouse, Mary 394–5
Whitelaw, Willie 331
Whiteley, Richard 285
Whitfield, June 136, 380
Who Is Nick Saint? 47, 289, 409
Widdecombe, Ann 330–1
Wilde, Constance 201
Wilde, Oscar 3, 9, 101, 192, 194–204, 210–11, 306, 374, 384, 410, 418
Wildeblood, Peter 207
Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust 127–8
Williams, Kenneth 137, 210, 230, 371, 410
Williams, Rowan 211
Wilson, Harold 216, 301, 345, 363, 401
Wilson, Josephine 235
Wilson, Sandy 142–3, 145, 342
Wilson, Sloan 284–6
Wilson, Woodrow 30
Wimbledon 298–9
Wind in the Willows 101–2
Winn, Godfrey 382–3, 406–7
Winnie-the-Pooh 3, 144
Wolfenden Report 204
Wolfit, Donald 129, 236, 411
Woman 382
Woman’s Hour 355–6
women’s rights 257–8, 259, 355
Wood, ‘Wee’ Georgie 142
Woolf, Leonard 388
Worsthorne, Peregrine 385, 388, 392–3
writing: fiction 47, 137, 200, 270, 289, 355, 409; non-fiction 88, 90–1, 106, 109, 116, 182, 375, 381–2; plays 213, 241, 410; see also diaries; journalism
Wuppertal 86, 88
Wykes, Florence 20
Yeats, W. B. 5, 297
Young, Jimmy 342
Zeffirelli, Franco 154, 233–4, 411
Zeldin, Theodore 360, 363
Zia, General 65–6
Zipp! 113–14, 204, 210, 416
Zuleika Dobson 350
Henry and Adelaide Brandreth and their nine children in 1892, with, far left and right, Virginia and Eugénie who drowned in 1900, and, seated far right, Gyles Brandreth’s grandfather, Benjamin Brandreth.
Gyles and Michèle Brandreth, their three children and seven grandchildren, 2017.
THIS IS JUST THE BEGINNING
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First published by Michael Joseph 2021
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Copyright © Gyles Brandreth, 2021
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Cover image © Author’s Own
ISBN: 978-0-241-48373-2
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Footnotes
Prologue: Permission to speak
fn1 I have tried, but not succeeded entirely. This runs to 140,000 words, about half the length of my last book and a quarter the length of the one before that. Count your blessings.
12. Sex
fn1 Tony Armstrong-Jones, 1st Earl of Snowdon, was born on 7 March 1930.
fn2 I have. They are on my bedside table still.
fn3 Code for ‘The truth is he loves me. I don’t mind. It’s nice to be loved.’
13. Oscar Wilde and friends
fn1 The message on the card is usually reported as reading ‘For Oscar Wilde posing as a somdomite’ – but the handwriting is unclear: it could be ‘Posing somdomite’ or ‘Posing as somdomite’.
14. School
fn1 Don’t judge it by the film version. It was recorded more than a year later and much of the subtlety has gone.
16. ‘That little extra something’
fn1 If you want names, I refer you to my record of my time as an MP and government whip: Breaking the Code: Westminster Diaries (published in 1999).
fn2 As this is an autobiography, is this the point where I list my favourite novelists and you compare yours with mine? My top ten would include: Elizabeth Taylor, Anthony Trollope, W. M. Thackeray, Henry Fielding, Charles Dickens, Arnold Bennett, Anthony Powell, C. P. Snow, J. I. M. Stewart, Barbara Pym. My favourite comic writers are P. G. Wodehouse and E. F. Benson. My favourite diarist is Virginia Woolf.
20. Illyria
fn1 Patrick Curran QC (1948–2021). By uncanny coincidence, on the day I happened to be proofreading this page, a mutual friend sent me word of Pat’s unexpected death, with a copy of his obituary from the South Wales Argus. It was evident his nice nature had not changed: ‘He was always very encouraging of the junior Bar, especially in Chambers, and offered guidance and advice in his gentle and kindly way, without affectation and with unfailing generosity of spirit.’
Gyles Brandreth, Odd Boy Out
