Portraits and Miniatures(125)

This admirably captures the half insider/half outsider position that characterized Wilson’s relationship not only with Oxford but with the upper civil service, the Bevanite group, and indeed the British public. Pimlott is anxious to be fair to Wilson, and pays appropriate tribute to his nerve, his kindness, his good manners to colleagues (and to people generally), and to his willingness to undergo personal humiliation in order to hold his party together as an effective instrument of democratic government.

Yet you can almost hear Pimlott changing gear before his favourable passages. None the less I hope and believe that his book will mark an important stage in the recovery of Wilson’s reputation which is already taking place. If I were a dealer in Prime Ministerial shares I would at present buy Wilsons as eagerly as I would sell Majors, although it is of course the case that there is room for a very sharp recovery in Wilsons before they begin to approach par.

The other thought with which I am left is that subjects who are alive, even if as quietly so as Lord Wilson alas is today, impose certain elusive but real limitations upon their biographers. Ben Pimlott has written a very good biography, but he has not written a definitive one. Philip Ziegler, whose more private-paper-assisted study is due out next year, need not fear that there is nothing more left to say. But even he will be writing with his subject in the wings. There is a lot to be said for allowing the doors of history to slam shut before the biographer gets to work. Widows are difficult enough, as several hopeful chroniclers have found, without having to cope with the living presence, immanent even if not interfering.