Berlin eggs and other errors

I have become mildly addicted to the anthology Rags of Time, a commonplace book, one of the most beautiful I have ever held, created by my old friend, the former Conservative Cabinet minister, Kenneth Baker.

Before leaving for Berlin at the weekend, I turned inside its gold-red-black cover, as though into an Edwardian hamper, and found  Churchill's less than prophetic remark in his first cabinet post that 'look at it from any point of view you like, and I say you will come to the conclusion, in regard to the relations between England and Germany that there is no cause of difference between them'.

And there, on the same page, there were three quotes on British indebtedness, one from Gordon Brown in 2007 predicting net borrowing in 2009 at £30 billion, a second from Alistair Darling in 2008 putting the same figure at £118 billion, and a third from the same Darling in 2009 itself extending the number to £175 billion.

Another old Conservative literary friend, from what now seems a very faraway age, is the former Chief Whip, Richard Ryder, a man who in no way ever fitted  the description of that role offered by Sir Robert Peel, and cited by Baker, that it was a place requiring a gentleman to fill it 'which no gentleman would take'. Of various of Ryder's successors. Peel might easily and appositely have been speaking. But let that be by and by.

From the desk of the distinguished former Whip came an excellent recommendation for Berlin reading which shortened the flights in both directions. The Breaking of Eggs by a 61-year-old businessman, sometime political hopeful and pottery-seller, Jim Powell, is a first novel of the Cold War recalled after the falling of the Wall in 1989, with characters whose hopes and predictions were universally as poor as Churchill's, Darling's and Brown's, a perfect preparation for the weeks of electoral promises that stretch before us now.