Jacob's Ladder: The Unauthorised Biography of Jacob Rees-Mogg

By Michael Ashcroft

Jacob Rees-Mogg is one of the most prominent and controversial figures in contemporary British politics. He is a man who divides opinion in his own party, in Parliament and across the country.
An arch-Brexiteer with significant business interests and a large personal fortune, he has long been a vocal critic of the European Union and of Prime Minister Theresa May's attempts to negotiate a Brexit deal. As chairman of the powerful anti-EU organisation the European Research Group, he has also been a thorn in the side of those seeking to dilute Brexit.
While many people mock him for his impeccable manners and traditional attitudes – he has been dubbed 'the Honourable Member for the eighteenth century' – an equally great number applaud him for his apparent conviction politics. Undoubtedly, Rees-Mogg stands out among the current crop of MPs and his growing influence cannot be ignored.
In this wide-ranging unauthorised biography of the Conservative Member of Parliament for North East Somerset, Michael Ashcroft, bestselling author of Call Me Dave: The Unauthorised Biography of David Cameron, turns his attention to one of the most intriguing politicians of our time.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Biteback Publishing
• Release date: Sep 10, 2019
• ISBN: 9781785905315

Michael Ashcroft

Lord Ashcroft KCMG PC is an international businessman, philanthropist, author and pollster. He is a former deputy chairman of the Conservative Party and currently honorary chairman of the International Democracy Union. He is founder and chairman of the board of trustees of Crimestoppers, vice-patron of the Intelligence Corps Museum, chairman of the trustees of Ashcroft Technology Academy, a senior fellow of the International Strategic Studies Association, a life governor of the Royal Humane Society, a former chancellor of Anglia Ruskin University and a former trustee of Imperial War Museums. Lord Ashcroft is an award-winning author who has written twenty-seven other books, largely on politics and bravery. His political books include biographies of David Cameron, Jacob Rees-Mogg, Rishi Sunak, Sir Keir Starmer and Carrie Johnson. His seven books on gallantry in the Heroes series include two on the Victoria Cross.

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CONTENTS

Title Page

Acknowledgements

Author’s Royalties

Prologue

Introduction

Chapter 1 Origins

Chapter 2 Double Life

Chapter 3 Eton

Chapter 4 Oxford

Chapter 5 Far East Man

Chapter 6 Central Fife

Chapter 7 Back to Basics

Chapter 8 Somerset Man

Chapter 9 God and Mammon

Chapter 10 Commons Man

Chapter 11 Brexit

Chapter 12 Social Media Celebrity

Chapter 13 ERG and JRM for PM

Afterword

Index

Plates

Also by Michael Ashcroft

Copyright

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Among the scores of people who kindly agreed to be interviewed for this book, some asked not to be named publicly. For this reason, it is not possible to identify here everybody who deserves thanks; suffice it to say their background briefings were extremely useful.

Several contributors who are happy to be recognised for their efforts were notably generous with their time and help. Andrew Bridgen MP, Simon Hoare MP, Stephen Pound MP, Tim Williams, Wingham Rowan, Sam Frost, Glenys Roberts, Mark Reckless AM, Daniel Hannan MEP, Dorothy Roberts, Jacqui Seymour, Pat Irvine, Donald Stewart, Huw van Steenis, Tim Young, Stuart Wheeler and Dr Martin Scurr all assisted and advised in different and important ways.

Thanks must also go to the formidable Angela Entwistle and her team, as well as to those at Biteback Publishing who were involved in the production of this book.

The staffs and members of the Cities of London and Westminster Conservative Association, the Fife Conservative Association and the Wrekin Conservative Association each performed a hugely valuable role in tracing election leaflets and former members.

Special thanks to chief researcher Miles Goslett and also to Margaret Crick, James Hanning and David Wharton, who all helped with research. James Hyman of the Hans Tasiemka Archive was able to produce newspaper and magazine cuttings that do not seem to be available anywhere else. Jamie Carstairs, in charge of Special Collections at the University of Bristol, was kind enough to provide copies of North East Somerset election leaflets. And the archives of Eton College; Trinity College, Oxford; Westminster Under School; Camden Local Studies Centre; Hampshire Record Office; and Private Eye magazine were also invaluable.

AUTHOR’S ROYALTIES

Lord Ashcroft is donating all author’s royalties from Jacob’s Ladder to charity.

PROLOGUE

OCTOBER 2017

Outside the conference centre, thousands of left-wing protesters and anarchists marched through the city demanding the toppling of the government. One, seemingly unaware that Rees-Mogg was not a member of Theresa May’s Cabinet, held a banner depicting him with an arrow through his head and the word c*** written on his forehead. At the same time, inside the conference centre, merchandise stalls sold memorabilia and trinkets including Moggmentum Shaving Cream at £5 per tin. If there had ever been doubt in Rees-Mogg’s mind about how well known he had become in Britain, being loved and loathed so publicly in equal measure surely would have laid any uncertainty to rest.

Over the next few days, he spoke at several fringe events, each one a sell-out attracting hundreds of party members. Having spent the summer lashing out at EU chiefs including the President of the EU Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker, whom he labelled a ‘pound shop Bismarck’ for apparently trying to force a payment of up to £80 billion from the UK before any post-Brexit trade deal talks could begin, he had a receptive audience. They appreciated his deeply held view that Britain should be a sovereign state responsible for its own affairs. Indeed, he confirmed his status as the favourite among Conservative grassroots members when he used one conference fringe meeting to turn his fire on the government for what he thought was its persistently negative stance on Brexit. Again, his high profile meant that he was targeted by those who oppose his politics. During a meeting of the Bruges Group at Manchester Town Hall, a group of demonstrators wielding placards burst in yelling, ‘Tory scum’. Rees-Mogg was branded a ‘despicable person’ by one protester and was told he was not welcome in Manchester. Showing a certain amount of courage in what must have been intimidating circumstances, he decided to speak to the man instead of calling for a security guard to remove him. ‘What do you disagree with me about?’ he asked. ‘Everything!’ the protester shouted. ‘Mention something specific,’ said Rees-Mogg, prompting his opponent to speak of his attitude to austerity and abortion. Rees-Mogg then tried to engage the man in debate. ‘It’s important to have the conversation,’ he said. ‘You’re welcome to talk to me, but it’s difficult if your intention is merely to shout and wave leaflets.’ It was precisely the measured response his supporters had come to expect from the politest man in Parliament, and it had the effect of neutralising the situation, though the intruders were eventually led away by a security guard. At a separate event later the same day – this time protected by police officers – he received cheers as he urged his party to stop ‘faffing about’ and enact Brexit, while also backing Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson’s calls for a clean break with Brussels. When Johnson spoke at a fringe event himself, however, most commentators agreed he seemed to have lost some of his sparkle. Rees-Mogg had to a degree upstaged his friend and was considered the hotter ticket.

Following the various unwanted intrusions on his life, some MPs might have shied away from further public appearances for a while, but Rees-Mogg was determined not to be knocked off course. In October 2017, he took up an invitation from executives at the radio station LBC to host a three-hour phone-in programme, covering for the weekday morning presenter James O’Brien. He was considered a good enough broadcaster for the ConservativeHome website to offer him his own fortnightly podcast, known as the Moggcast, soon afterwards. In April 2018, he added to this commitment by accepting a regular half-hour show, Ring Rees-Mogg, each fortnight on LBC. (By January 2019, the station had given him his own hour-long show during the peak drive-time slot every Friday night. He insists on presenting this programme from his constituency home in Somerset, sometimes with a fire burning behind him, rather than from LBC’s studios in London.) Given his comfortable financial status, it can be stated with some confidence that he did not accept these opportunities solely for the money.

In November 2017, Rees-Mogg again attracted negative attention in some quarters for his attendance at a private meeting with Donald Trump’s former chief strategist Steve Bannon in London. The year before, Rees-Mogg had said he would ‘almost certainly vote for Trump if I was American’, but when a 2005 recording of Trump came to light in which he made derogatory remarks about women, Rees-Mogg distanced himself from the US politician and said he would abstain if he had a vote. Despite his cooling support for Trump, whom he has not met, he was happy to talk to Bannon, widely regarded by those on the left as a controversial figure through having worked for Trump for the first seven months of his administration and via his involvement in the American right-wing website Breitbart. They spoke for more than an hour in a Mayfair hotel, specifically about how conservative movements can become the dominant force in British and American politics. The meeting was reportedly brokered by Raheem Kassam, a former adviser to Nigel Farage and at that time a Breitbart employee in London. When Rees-Mogg was later asked about it, he played down its significance, claiming, ‘I talk to any number of people whose political views I do not share or fully endorse.’ He also said it would be ‘misleading’ to describe the meeting as ‘convivial’. No matter what they discussed, the fact that they had met at all was grist to the mill of some of Rees-Mogg’s adversaries.

In Parliament, unease among Brexit-backing MPs was growing. The following month, December 2017, Rees-Mogg made a memorable intervention during Prime Minister’s Questions when he tackled Theresa May over Brexit, claiming that her so-called red lines regarding the border between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland were fading. Up until that point, May had insisted that she would not bow to pressure from the EU when it came to the UK leaving the single market and customs union after Brexit. But when it was revealed in a leaked draft paper that she planned to have ‘continued regulatory alignment’ between the Irish Republic and the North, major doubts about the future of Brexit rose to the surface. Rees-Mogg asked in the Commons, ‘Before my Right Honourable Friend next goes to Brussels, will she apply a new coat of paint to her red lines, because I fear on Monday they were beginning to look a little bit pink.’ His comment generated laughter, but his point was a deadly serious one, showing the growing mistrust between May and her own MPs. Their belief that you cannot align regulation in one part of the UK with the EU because it would mean Britain effectively remaining in the bloc would dog British politics for months.

INTRODUCTION

On 26 March 1981, an eleven-year-old schoolboy stood up to address the annual general meeting in London of Lonrho, one of the largest conglomerates in the world, run by the feared businessman Roland ‘Tiny’ Rowland. Was it really sensible, the precocious interrogator asked from the floor, for Lonrho to make a bid to buy The Observer, Britain’s oldest Sunday newspaper? And, if the purchase went ahead, what plans were there for making The Observer profitable?

As Lonrho’s chairman, it fell to Lord Duncan-Sandys, a former Conservative minister and erstwhile son-in-law of Sir Winston Churchill, to answer the child. This was a shareholders’ meeting, after all, and his question had to be treated as respectfully as anybody else’s, even if he was accompanied by his nanny. Duncan-Sandys confirmed that there were indeed plans to make The Observer profitable, but, in view of an ongoing Monopolies Commission inquiry, he was unable to reveal them.

If Duncan-Sandys had been in any doubt as to the identity of the youth who put him on the spot, he was soon made aware of his name: Jacob Rees-Mogg.

This unlikely disturbance marked the first time that Rees-Mogg had warranted a mention in the national press on his own account, with several newspapers reporting on his intervention the next day and revealing that he owned 340 Lonrho shares.¹ His name had previously appeared in print from time to time in relation to his father, William, who edited The Times for fourteen years until March 1981. But for a boy so young to be this confident in a setting as formal as a multinational AGM attended by hundreds of people was considered noteworthy in itself, regardless of his father’s prominence.

The Lonrho vignette captures much about Rees-Mogg that he has carried into adulthood. He is not shy of publicity. He is very interested in money. And he is clever. Furthermore, like many schoolboys and most politicians, it is undoubtedly true that he has an ego, even if, in his case, it is not as out of control as the egos of some of his colleagues in Westminster. In a straightforward sense, therefore, Jacob Rees-Mogg has not changed that much in the nearly forty years since he first came to public attention.

Yet although he has risen to prominence politically in recent years, in 21st-century Britain he is an anomaly. In the undeniably more cynical and coarse environment that has become standard for those who operate in public life, logic suggests that this devoutly Catholic, Eton- and Oxford-educated throwback to the 1950s should be almost universally disliked, mocked and derided. His opinions on a range of subjects, particularly abortion, make the blood run cold for many. Add to this the fact that he has become one of the principal players in the feverish Brexit debate and he should, on paper, be one of the most unpopular politicians in the country, not to mention one of the most isolated MPs in the House of Commons.

And yet, this is far from the case. In Westminster, this almost comically well-spoken High Tory backbencher, the so-called Honourable Member for the Nineteenth Century (or Eighteenth Century depending on who you speak to), commands the respect of many serious politicians of all hues, even those who wear class consciousness on their sleeves. Both associates and rivals seemingly find it hard not to reflect back onto him the immense politeness that he shows to them. His knowledge of and regard for the institutions of Parliament, to say nothing of his oratorical skills, help to underpin the esteem in which he is held.

Beyond Westminster, the story is similar. Rees-Mogg seems to be at least as popular around the country as he is disliked by those who find his political views unpalatable. Certainly, some voters see him as the epitome of the out-of-touch politician whose life is as far removed as could be imagined from those of the people he is supposed to represent. Yet his knack for asking – and answering – awkward questions with what might best be described as lethal courtesy is admired. That he holds contrarian, unfashionable views and is not afraid to voice them has afforded him a certain approval as well. He appears to be part of the Establishment and yet, somehow, he has successfully set himself apart from it. His ‘brand’, based on old-fashioned courtesy and appearance, is now so strong that he has become one of the best-known public figures, not just one of the highest-profile politicians, in Britain.

In him, the effect of appearing old before his time has probably generated greater public recognition in the twenty-first century than he could have hoped for had he been an MP in the twentieth century. After all, how many other MPs can boast of having a personal following – in his case Moggmentum – of approximately 150,000 members?² How many other sitting MPs have a national radio programme each week, as he does on LBC? And how many of his fellow parliamentarians could sell out the London Palladium (capacity: 2,286 seats) as he did in February 2019, when he agreed to take part in a wide-ranging conversation covering economics, the EU and the future of party politics with Fraser Nelson, editor of The Spectator?³

Some say that his consistency, his manners and his belief in freedom of speech provide reassurance. Others simply think he is ‘authentic’. But is he? This book sets out to answer that question by examining how Jacob Rees-Mogg has got to where he is today.

I have known Jacob Rees-Mogg since I helped with the funding of his 2001 general election campaign when he stood as the Conservative Party candidate in the Wrekin. Later, in 2010, while I was a deputy chairman of the Conservative Party, his North East Somerset constituency was on the target list, which I oversaw. We have never been close friends, but we do know each other socially, and he was a guest at my 70th birthday party. (By coincidence, I was based at offices in Cowley Street, near the Houses of Parliament, for some years. When I vacated the property, he bought it, converted it into a comfortable residence and has now moved there with his family.) Like many other people, I have enjoyed his contributions in Parliament and, in common with so many of the Conservative Party’s grassroots supporters, I have always believed he has talent and ambition. He is a worthy biographical subject for two reasons. Firstly, given his position as a prominent MP, it is worth knowing more about his background, his story, his character and his motivations. And, second, he is young enough to have a substantial future in politics, perhaps even as the holder of one of the great offices of state, whether as Chancellor of the Exchequer, Home Secretary or Foreign Secretary.

NOTES

1 Financial Times, Daily Telegraph, Guardian, The Times, 27 March 1981

2 Information from Sam Frost, co-founder of Moggmentum, 12 March 2019

3 An Evening with Jacob Rees-Mogg, London Palladium, 26 February 2019

CHAPTER 1

ORIGINS

It remains a surprisingly frequent assumption in Britain that a double-barrelled surname somehow proves that a person is high-born. In fact, until quite recently, the primary reason for two families joining together their last names tended to be pragmatic and invariably related to money. A double-barrelled surname is certainly no indication of an unusually distinguished lineage.

In the case of Jacob Rees-Mogg, the popular perception is that his well-spoken tones, Eton and Oxford education and double-breasted suits automatically signify that he is upper class or even aristocratic. Yet on the British social scale, this is wide of the mark, as he would no doubt be the first to acknowledge. When the journalist Andrew Neil asked him in 2010, ‘So what class are you?’ Rees-Mogg blushed slightly and replied, ‘I’m a man of Somerset.’¹ Neil dealt with this evasive answer by opining, ‘This will probably hurt you. I would say [you are] sort of upper middle rather than upper [class].’ Rees-Mogg confirmed, ‘Well, I’m certainly not part of the aristocracy, that’s definitely true.’ Indeed, archival research confirms that his Rees-Mogg forebears never owned a great estate, nor had a hereditary title. And, as shall become clear, his mother’s origins are altogether humbler than most people might expect. He has always been, without doubt, privileged, but that is quite distinct from being born into great prosperity or being truly ‘posh’.

The Rees-Mogg name in conjoined form has existed for just over 200 years. It was created shortly after the Rev. John Rees, a Welsh cleric of modest means from the village of Wick in the Vale of Glamorgan, married Mary Mogg Wooldridge, a member of the Mogg family, on 13 August 1805.

The Moggs were Somerset landowners who had played an active role in the county’s clergy, in local politics, in the law and in other respectable professions stretching back to the thirteenth century. This means that Jacob Rees-Mogg, MP for North East Somerset since 2010, may well be unique among current members of the House of Commons in being able to trace his family roots back so far in his own constituency.

By the mid-seventeenth century, the Moggs also had coal interests. Yet whatever power and influence they exerted in Somerset, it never extended beyond this part of the world, perhaps because they were not overwhelmingly successful in any one venture. For all of these reasons, most historians would therefore probably be inclined to categorise the Moggs and, latterly, the Rees-Moggs as ‘minor gentry’, lesser members of the landowning class. Without doubt, this would place them at the higher end of the class structure, but they could never be thought of as having been notably rich or dazzlingly grand. With that said, since the seventeenth century the Moggs and then the Rees-Moggs appear always to have been reasonably well-off and over the past 350 years have lived in some of the nicest houses in the Mendip Hills, an attractive area to the south of Bath and Bristol.

The union that began the Rees-Mogg dynasty arose only as a result of an unconventional offer made by John Mogg, who died in 1779.² In his will, he left his favourite daughter, Mary, whose married name was Wooldridge, the small Elizabethan property which had been in the family since the 1720s, Cholwell House in the village of Clutton. He also left her about 100 acres of land. Given that John Mogg had a total of ten children, one of whom died an infant, it would not be surprising if the decision to hand over most of his estate to just one of his offspring had upset some of Mary’s siblings.

John Mogg’s will further stipulated somewhat eccentrically that one of Mary’s children, also called Mary, should be left Cholwell House and the accompanying land upon her mother’s death. Again, John Mogg showed a high degree of favouritism in making this bequest, because he had at least three other grandchildren as well as Mary at the time he made the will. The only condition attached to this life-changing opportunity for his young granddaughter Mary, who was a mere four years old when John Mogg died, was that whichever man she married had to change his surname to incorporate the name Mogg within twelve months of their wedding.

Neither Mary nor John Rees, Mary’s eventual husband, appears to have had any difficulty in adhering to this arrangement. According to a report in the Bath Chronicle and Weekly Gazette published on 12 June 1806, John Rees had by that time applied for a royal licence to acquire the double-barrelled surname which has become so well known in Britain over the past fifty years, first through the long-serving editor of The Times turned life peer William Rees-Mogg and then via his younger son, Jacob.

John and Mary Rees-Mogg finally inherited Cholwell House and its land when Mary’s mother died in 1829. In 1815, the Rees-Moggs had produced a son, William, Jacob’s great-great-grandfather. William was a solicitor who is credited with building the fortune from which subsequent generations of Rees-Moggs benefited, entrenching their position as a comfortable middle-class country family. His success in business, including in coal, encouraged him in the 1850s to demolish the original Cholwell House and to replace it with a mansion on the opposite hillside, complete with a walled garden and glasshouses. While this may have been a typically Victorian show of affluence, the wider family is known to have regretted it later on, because the new property had substantially less charm than the original.³ William lived to be ninety-three years old. His son, also William, and also a solicitor, who was Jacob’s great-grandfather, died only four years after his father, in 1913.

Fletcher Rees-Mogg, Jacob’s grandfather, seems to have taken a less businesslike approach to life compared with his enterprising Victorian ancestor. He was born in 1889, grew up at Cholwell and attended Charterhouse School in Surrey. From there, he went to University College, Oxford and then to the Sorbonne before working briefly as a schoolmaster in Lancashire. Not being physically robust, he served as an ambulance driver in France during the First World War. In 1925, he inherited the family estate and began to manage it, living thereafter as a gentleman farmer. By this time, it comprised about 1,200 acres and a dozen tenanted cottages.⁴ Fletcher was asset-rich but not necessarily cash-rich, partly because the estate’s income had to be shared between several relatives. He died in 1962, leaving a widow, Beatrice, who was Jacob’s grandmother, and an estate valued at £60,121.

Fletcher’s son William, Jacob’s father, was born in 1928 and also grew up at Cholwell, though after the Second World War the house was sold and was later turned into local authority offices.⁵ In 1985, it became a nursing home, but, by a quirk of fate, it lies within Jacob Rees-Mogg’s constituency and he visits it periodically in his capacity as the local MP.

William’s influence on his younger son is hard to exaggerate. There is a strong sense that he lived vicariously through Jacob in some respects, willing him to succeed. Several people who have offered insights into the Rees-Mogg family for the purposes of this book have commented that Jacob (or ‘Jakie’, as he was known in boyhood) was his father’s favourite, the child to whom he gave most of his attention and who was equally devoted to him in return. Indeed, when Jacob was a young boy in the early 1980s, William even helped him to create his own media profile in a manner that might be referred to these days as ‘pushy parenting’.

It is not just that his distinctive surname opened the doors of opportunity for Jacob. All the available evidence suggests that throughout William’s life, he actively encouraged or was involved in every major endeavour that Jacob undertook, both at school and at university, and then beyond into adulthood. William was not born into the Establishment, but he became part of it. In that context, he often used his impeccable connections to secure Jacob an audience with an influential person and, at least twice, he helped to get him a lucrative job. Jacob’s election to the House of Commons as a Conservative MP was a particularly proud moment for William, not only because he had attempted to enter Parliament twice in the 1950s without succeeding, but also because he had a seat in the House of Lords by then. Father and son were, for two years, parliamentarians together. One friend says they were not just extremely close but also physically similar, even down to quite small details. ‘I remember seeing them once standing beside each other and they were both using their right hand to fiddle with their left cufflink. It’s a habit and they were totally unaware the other was doing it.’

As for Jacob, it seems that he has inherited much of his father’s old-world persona, not just his appreciation of eighteenth-century cartoons and love of double-breasted suits made by the Savile Row tailor Henry Poole. Politically, he also took on his father’s views. In his life, William moved from being a friend and supporter of Ted Heath to becoming a monetarist and Thatcherite. Margaret Thatcher was and remains a key figure in the political life of Jacob Rees-Mogg. Perhaps unexpectedly, given that they were born forty-one years apart, in Jacob the effect of appearing older than his years has probably helped to earn him greater public recognition in the twenty-first century than his father ever managed in the twentieth. With this in mind, the question of how much of Jacob’s image is contrived, how much of it he absorbed from his father by osmosis, and how much of it is derived from his own personality, is a fascinating one. For all of these reasons, it is necessary to examine briefly the life of William Rees-Mogg before turning to his son.

William’s mother was born Beatrice Warren in Mamaroneck, New York in 1892. She was an Irish-American whose four grandparents were poor Irish immigrants, but she managed to rise up from this unpromising start to become a Shakespearean actress of some repute. She was also a Roman Catholic, and it is because of her that William, as a practising adherent, brought up his own children in the Catholic Church. Beatrice met Fletcher Rees-Mogg while visiting England in May 1920 and within two weeks they were engaged. They had three children: William plus his two older sisters, Elizabeth and Anne.

William’s childhood in Somerset was happy though apparently rather lonely in that he had few friends of his own age living nearby. He was very close to his mother, who used to read Macbeth to him in his nursery and would invite him to repeat Shakespeare’s lines back to her. His father taught him at home until he was sent to board at Clifton College Preparatory School in Bristol at the age of nine. In 1941, aged twelve, he sat the scholarship exam for Eton, but his attempt was unsuccessful. At the time, he took this failure on the chin, but there is evidence to suggest that not having been a pupil at the world’s best-known school nagged at him throughout his life.⁶

In his memoirs, published in 2011, the year before his death aged eighty-four, William wrote with a palpable sense of injustice of his accidental discovery in the 1990s that he had not been granted an Eton scholarship because of his Catholicism. He alleged that the Eton provost in 1941, Lord Quickswood, was personally responsible for this act of discrimination and reflected over several paragraphs on what might have been. ‘I know I would have enjoyed Eton,’ he declared. ‘Indeed, I might well have been too happy, too much of an Etonian.’ He went on, ‘If I had gone to Eton … I would probably have found my political progress easier; there were plenty of Old Etonian chairmen of safe Conservative seats in the 1950s, though few are left now.’

He then wrote in terms which suggest it mattered to him very much that Jacob did go to Eton, albeit not as a scholar, observing:

I felt more at home at Eton, both in 1941 and later when my son Jacob was enjoying his time there … If I had entered the world of Eton, the world of Luxmoore’s garden and the College Library, of the cricket fields, of Thomas Gray and Horace Walpole, I might well have found it too much