LETTERS Bogus honker
Sir: There is no mystery about my mistrust of Alan Clark. It is not the product of sexu- al jealousy, as Taki (High life, 15 May) claims. I was not aware of his sexual prowess, and rather doubt it after reading today's Daily Express, in which he com- plains of the serialisation of his diary:
They made it sound like I was having physi- ical relations with them — which is complete- ly untrue . . Jenny Easterbrook made quite clear she thought I was an uncouth lout . . . If people read the book they will appreciate that I was being self-mocking, if anything. People will see I was lamenting the fact that these girls would pay no attention to me. Nobody gets booked in 430 pages of my diary
It rather looks as if he has never bonked anybody except, presumably, his poor wife. Nor does my hostility derive from the sug- gestion, which Clark himself proposes, that he once walked out of a dinner party in protest against my rubbing his nose in my own wife's aristocratic connections. I have no memory of any such conversation, and assume he dreamed it.
Nor do my feelings derive from the per- ception that he is a stinking cad. Some of my best friends are cads . . My objection to him is that he paraded as one of 28 Tory stinkers supporting a socialist bill to outlaw hunting on St Valentine's Day 1992. I do not wish to see him back as a Conservative Member. He could try his luck with Paddy Pantsdown's Liberal Democrats, but I feel even they might be suspicious of a bogus banker.
Auberon Waugh
Literary Review, 51 Beak Street, London Wl.
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