Sir: What an invitation! My nomination for female Widmerpool is
Baroness Jay; admit- tedly she didn't start from scratch, but what a survivor! The affair with Carl Bernstein, while wife of our Washington ambassador, publicity during the Thatcher years on Aids funding (followed many years later by the admission that the likelihood of a hetero- sexual epidemic had been vastly overstated) and finally appointment to the House of Lords etc. under New Labour. Recently she and her newish husband featured full-page in a Harpers & Queen profile of Britain's `power couples'. Perfect. (No reference to their complicated mental histories.) Further questions: can there be foreign- born Widmerpools? (Lord Weidenfeld), and is Widmerpoolism genetic — can there be dynasties of them?
C.J. Apperley 43 Fairfax Road, Bedford Park, London W4
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