LETTERS Embarrassed host
Sir: When your father was Chancellor of the Exchequer and said fascinating things at a private dinner party at my house no one present would have dreamed of re- cording them either accurately or inaccur- ately for press publication. I assume you would not have published such material to embarrass your father had it come your way. A. N. Wilson was at a private dinner party at my house in March 1987 on the well-known understanding that private conversations are private. Nevertheless you have published in the Spectator (30 June) what purports to be a detailed account of what one guest said. A. N. Wilson describes his action in giving you the material as 'probably the grossest impropriety'. He remarks that he does so 'without very much compunction since she never gives "interviews". . .'. Thus he makes clear that he knew the interviewee was unaware she was being interviewed for press publication and obviously would not have permitted it. Knowing this, your publication of the deceitfully obtained and stolen 'interview' was a greater gross im- propriety than A. N. Wilson's.
From your own background you must know that prominent people cannot ever go to a private dinner party and speak freely unless they are confident that mis- chievous use will not be made in the press of anything they may have said or may have been thought to say. This is particu- larly so with someone like Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother who is unable to make any comments on, or correction of, what she has been alleged to say.
A. N. Wilson is proud of winning the 1975 Ellerton Theological Prize. His underhand behaviour does not square with the Christian ethics he professes. Nor with those of a gentleman, which I had naïvely thought him to be.
Over the years I have been at many private luncheons and dinner parties. This is the first time I have encountered a guest playing such a shabby trick on another guest. The free communication of social life would become impossible if A. N. Wilson's behaviour were not an isolated instance. He is boastfully shameless in being a scoundrel. But I hope you have enough decency to be ashamed of your participation in, and encouragement to, A. N. Wilson's squalid theft of an unautho- rised 'interview'. It is worse than the much complained of invasion of privacy by downmarket tabloids. I am surprised at your giving ammunition to those who think the Calcutt Committee was not sufficiently stringent.
Wyatt of Weeford
19 Cavendish Avenue, London NW8
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