David's Reviews > A Very English Scandal: Sex, Lies and a Murder Plot at the Heart of the Establishment

A scream! I was laughing on the DLR.

Bits:

"Then, in January 1962, a former patient at the Ashurst Clinic called 'Jane R' turned up in London. While they were both in hospital, she and Josiffe had become friends. At her suggestion, they had discharged themselves and rented a house in Polstead Road, North Oxford, together with another Littlemore patient called Ian B. It was a disastrous arrangement from the very start. On their first night there Ian had tried to seduce Josiffe. Running downstairs to the kitchen to tell Jane what had happened, Josiffe found her on her knees with her head in the oven. Pulling her out by her feet, he had to smash a window with a chair to get rid of the glass."

"Thorpe referred to Ted Heath as 'The plum pudding around which no one has succeeded in lighting the brandy.'"

"Afterwards Lord Arran was asked why homosexual law reform had succeeded, while his efforts to protect the rights of badgers had not. Arran paused, and then said ruminatively, 'There are not many badgers in the House of Lords.'"

"'Wouldn't it look rather odd if he falls off his bar stool stone-dead?'
'You can apologize to the landlord and ask him to direct you to the nearest mine-shaft.'"

"Marriage had done nothing to dispel his air of unworldliness. Cantley had once tried a case in which a 23-year-old man had applied for damages after being badly injured in a bulldozer accident. Told that the injuries had affected the man's sex life, he asked if he was married. Learning that he was not, a puzzled Cantley said, 'Well, I can't see how it affects his sex life'."

Did you know that Jeremy's sister killed herself?