Sir Patrick Cormack FSA

Conservative Party | Staffordshire South

House Magazine Diary

Wednesday 23rd February
One of our early St. Margaret’s Services and then briefly to the office to sign a few letters and on for one of my regular dental checks.  Then its back for Prime Minister’s Questions.  After hearing Ruth Kelly’s admirably delivered first major Statement, across to the St. Stephen’s Tavern to welcome a group of Bosnian Members of Parliament, over here on a study tour.  As one of those few who spoke out in the dark days of the early ‘90s I find it enormously comforting and refreshing to meet Bosnian parliamentarians talking confidently of their country becoming a member of the European Union.

Then it’s an afternoon in the Chamber, intervening, when I can, in the Prevention of Terrorism Bill debate.  Why, oh why could not the Secretary of State have given us the weekend to study this Bill and then put its Second Reading and remaining stages next week?

A brief visit, really just to deliver apologies, to the Three Faiths Forum who are meeting in Committee Room 14, and an equally brief foray, later, to the 1922 Executive Committee where we talk about the great fireworks display we are hoping to have to mark the 400th Anniversary of Parliament’s delivery from the Gunpowder Plot. 

Then to Number 10 to mark Hull University’s inauguration of the Wilberforce Institute for the Study of Slavery.  I graduated from Hull in 1961 and in 1983 wrote a short life of the greatest backbencher of all time.  So I am particularly glad to be at the party, very graciously hosted by Mrs Blair.  Then it’s back to vote and, later, a convivial dinner at Allium in Dolphin Square – one of my favourite London restaurants.

Thursday 24th February
To Tate Britain for a private view, with the All-Party Arts & Heritage Group, of the Turner, Whistler, Monet exhibition.  This is one of the most beautifully spellbinding exhibitions of recent years – room after room of arresting, but mostly comforting, images of the Thames.  Not that Turner’s great picture of the fire of 1834 is comforting, though one colleague does remark that it was almost worthwhile burning the old Palace down to get that picture – and, he added, to get Barry’s Palace!  I don’t think we have ever been to an exhibition where the Palace has been the subject of so many extraordinarily fine pictures.  One wall is taken up with a series of Monet’s misty masterpieces.

Later I miss Business Questions to got to St. Margaret’s for the Memorial Service to Peter Emery, one of the most engagingly delightful of our former colleagues, whose long Parliamentary life, and impish sense of fun, is arrestingly evoked by Michael Mates in his fine address. 

In the afternoon a meeting of our group (and we now have over two hundred supporters) which is campaigning for a wholly non-elected Upper House. 

In the evening Mary and I have dinner with my cousin Peter and Sandra at the Arts Club, to which I was recently elected an Honorary Member.  We dine by candlelight as the snow falls in the courtyard beyond, surrounded by fine pictures by past and present members.

Friday 25th February
Richard, our younger son, who is a banker in Hong Kong, flies in to London at 6.00am and joins us for breakfast just after 7.00.  Before 8.30 I am on the road to Staffordshire where I have a series of surgery appointments and then a meeting with the Chief Executive of Advantage West Midlands, another with the Director of Education and a third with my local Primary Care Trust.

In the evening to Patshull Hall, one of Staffordshire’s finest historic houses, recently rescued and restored by Tim Reynolds, who has become a hero of the local community as a result.  There are around ninety people for a fundraising evening where I give a talk on my thirty-five years in the House. 

Saturday 26th February
Off early to an election campaign meeting.  We are planning everything on the assumption that it will be on May 5th.  If we have to put arrangements on hold I don’t think anyone will be too upset, apart from me!

In the evening we co-host a drinks party for recent arrivals in the village, at the Vicarage. 

Sunday 27th February
A fairly relaxed day, with a very convivial Sunday lunch at a friend’s farmhouse – and no journey back to London.

Monday 28th February
For the first time in some eighteen months I take the train from Wolverhampton.  I know I shall miss having the car when I go back to the flat in the evenings but I hate the Monday morning drive.  Unless I leave by 4.30am – feasible only in the Summer – or after 10.00 it is a nightmare.  As it is, the train is on time and I am in my office, having read the papers from cover to cover, by 9.45am.  I spend the next four hours dealing with a pile of paper and then the rest of the day in the Chamber, taking part in the Committee Stage of the Prevention of Terrorism Bill.  How could any government drive through such a measure with such a lack of opportunity for the Commons to examine and debate it?  That’s what I object to, far more than the contents of the Bill – though I think that it will be pretty well unworkable unless there are significant changes.  But with a very narrow Government majority of 14 in the main Division, and a Third Reading vote not long before midnight, it is almost like old times.

Tuesday 1st March
In early and then our weekly House Magazine editorial planning meeting followed by a brief appearance at a seminar on the House of Lords in the Moses Room, organised by The Constitution Unit.

In the afternoon a series of meetings – dashing from one to the other and ending with a fairly lengthy one of the Joint Committee on Security, about which I can, of course, say absolutely nothing!  Then to Lancaster House for a reception, given by the Foreign Secretary, for Abu Mazen, the newly elected Palestinian President.  There is an atmosphere of palpable goodwill and I come away feeling encouraged about the prospects for peace for the first time in years.  And so, in good humour, I go to the Athenaeum and have a very convivial dinner at the Club Table.  Robert Winston is there, as is Sir David Wilson, former Director of the British Musuem, David Trimble, and other colleagues.  We have some splendid, spirited discussion about the affairs of club and nation and about a new series on spirituality which Robert Winston is beginning to film.  If anyone is an illustration of the value of an appointed House of Lords he is.

Wednesday 2nd March
To the Royal Academy for another All-Party Arts and Heritage Group private view, this time of The Turks.  Exhibition Director Norman Rosenthal takes us through the galleries, pointing out some of the extraordinary objects gathered together, at relatively short notice, for one of the most revealing historical exhibitions I have ever seen.  It is my second visit for we queued on the first Saturday morning it was open and enjoyed it enormously then.  But I must go back to see the textiles, leatherwork, tiles, carpets, manuscripts, all of wondrous quality.  I think we are all especially taken by the fantastic illuminated manuscripts attributed to Muhammad of the Black Pen.  They have never before been exhibited in public anywhere in the world.

Then it’s briefly to the office and on to the Abbey for a very uplifting Service of Thanksgiving for the late Sir Angus Ogilvy who deserved, if anyone did, Chaucer’s description of the “true and parfait knight”.  His qualities are affectionately described in a masterly address by his son James.

Then to the House to give lunch to Graham Jones, a remarkable Welsh portrait painter who was responsible for our portraits of Enoch Powell, Michael Foot, Geoffrey Howe, Lord Callaghan, David Steele, Tam Dalyell and Dennis Skinner – all commissioned whilst I was Chairman of the Works of Art Committee here.  I now do a similar job at the Athenaeum and Graham is just back from the Palace where he has had his second sitting with Prince Philip, the Club’s senior Royal member.

In the afternoon I catch up on paperwork and have a couple of meetings, before going to the 1922 Executive and then on to a question and answer session with a group of students from Philip Norton’s Department of Politics at Hull.

Then Philip and I spend time working on the pamphlet on the House of Lords which we are planning to publish shortly.

Thursday 3rd March
To the Ritz for breakfast with the Vietnamese Ambassador.  We discuss a possible report to be published later this year.  It is thirty-four years since I was last in Vietnam, during the war, and we reminisce about the dramatic changes that have taken place since.

Back to the House for a couple of hours at the desk and then to Westminster Abbey again, for my third Memorial Service in a week.  This time it is to celebrate the life and work of Alan Younger, perhaps the finest stained glass artist of recent years.  He was responsible for the wonderful new East window in the Henry VII Chapel and that is where we gather – in one of the most glorious architectural masterpieces in Western Europe.  I sit in the stalls, the banners of the Knights of the Bath above me, as we give thanks for a remarkable artist and craftsman, whose career is beautifully encapsulated in an address by my cousin, Peter Cormack, one of the greatest experts on 19th and 20th Century stained glass.  I have my own particular memories for Peter introduced me to Alan and as a result he was commissioned to do two windows for my parish church in Enville, one to mark the Millennium, and another to commemorate our former patron. 

As I look at his window before leaving it is a salutary reminder that artists and craftsmen leave far more enduring memories than politicians.