The folly of history

SIR NICHOLAS SOAMES is the sort of character of whom it’s said that ‘they don’t make them like that any more’. Even with his now slimmer frame, he cuts a formidable figure, conversing in a splendid basso profundo. ‘God almighty, what a question!’, he booms. ‘I thought this was COUNTRY LIFE, not Politico!’ We’re here to talk about his presidency of the South of England Show, which runs in pared-down form this weekend, but there’s no extricating the former Member for Mid Sussex from politics.

He stepped down at the 2019 election after 35 years, but.’ A vocal Remainer, Sir Nicholas, with 20 other MPs, had the whip withdrawn. ‘Very harsh words were exchanged on all sides’—he described the Prime Minister as an ‘ocean-going clot’. ‘It was,’ he sighs, ‘a rum time. I thought they were bonkers and what was going to happen would be very damaging for my country.’ For many, the sacking of Churchill’s grandson was the nadir of the Brexit wrangling, but Sir Nicholas is gracious (Boris Johnson reinstated him) and he has since received ‘a very nice, friendly message’ from him.