Aitken Gets the Quality of Mercy That We Deny to Children

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Jonathan Aitken may have been studying the Bible in the nick, but as homecomings went, his did not exactly follow the script of the parable: no jubilant rejoicing, no killing of the fatted calf. Instead, his belongings in a bin liner, the jailbird's pallor on his gaunt face, the disgraced former minister sloped home to face the receivers' warrants and not a few people's schadenfreude. The cheerless lot of the pariah awaits him.

Or does it?

I bet that, after a year or so in the wilderness (or at Wycliffe, the Oxford college where he intends to study theology), the man who lied about his bill at the Ritz and forced his daughter to perjure herself will slink into the …