I've just finished reading 'A Very English Scandal' by John Preston (there's a tie-in with a recent well-received UK TV 3-part series of the same name). British board members of a certain age will need no reminding of the Thorpe murder plot scandal which occupied much media attention in the 1970s. For the benefit of non-Brits, an unstable young man called Norman Scott had been claiming since the 1960s that he had had a homosexual relationship with the flamboyant Liberal MP Jeremy Thorpe (and party leader from 1967). By the early 1970s attempts to fob him off in various ways had failed and his claims had become more insistent and potentially damaging to Thorpe's career. On Exmoor one night in 1975 Scott's Great Dane dog was shot by an unknown assailant and Scott himself only escaped because the gun then jammed. Various letters linked Thorpe to Scott and, in May 1979, Thorpe and three associates were put on trial at the Old Bailey accused of conspiracy to murder. Needless to say, the trial was a media sensation, no sitting MP, let alone party leader, having faced such a charge before. All were acquitted, partly due to the demolition of the credibility of prosecution witnesses by the then relatively unknown QC George Carman and partly to the summing up of the judge Sir Joseph Cantley, soon to be regarded as one of the most partial in British legal history. Despite the verdict, the general assumption was that the Establishment had closed ranks to get Thorpe off and his last years were marked by ill health, public neglect and seclusion.
The book is a very entertaining read, part gripping thriller and part tragi-comic farce. The events described are extraordinary but somehow uniquely British in terms of all the hypocrisy, class consciousness and buffoonery that accompanied them. Colourful characters abound and there are many laugh-out-loud moments. My favourite anecdote concerns Lord Arran who was responsible for guiding homosexual law reform through the House of Lords in 1967 (the Labour MP Leo Abse guided it through the Commons). Arran was nutty about badgers and allowed them to roam freely through his country house. He and his wife had to wear rubber galoshes to protect themselves from bites on the ankles. After the bill legalising homosexual acts for 21-year-olds and upwards had been ratified in the Lords, Arran was asked why this reform had succeeded but not his efforts to protect the rights of badgers. He thought for a moment and then replied, 'There are not many badgers in the House of Lords.'
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