The Agreeable World of Wallace Arnold: Poor, Poor Jonathan (Not That He Was a Friend)

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I See from my diary that I have, on occasion, found myself at Mr Jonathan Aitken's house in Lord North Street. But my visits have been infrequent: no more than a dozen times a year since the early 1970s, often fewer. Last year, for instance, I visited the building on only 10 occasions, and I have no record of having enjoyed myself at all.

It is important to make it clear - and my solicitor Mr Carter-Ruck will be only too ready to make it even clearer - that my association with Mr Aitken was not based on anything as vulgar as "friendship". Far from it. We were both of the same political persuasion, and, from time to time, he would invite me to participate in a candid …