She was funny in a register entirely her own. On day one in the Strasbourg parliament I stepped out of an office into one of those interminable corridors to see her at a distance, walking in lockstep with Claire Fox, the two of them deep in conversation. Two women of ferocious conviction from utterly different traditions, the convent Tory and the old revolutionary, neither of them over five foot four, moving down the corridor like a single determined engine. She looked up at my somewhat awed face as they passed and twinkled. ‘Two galleons passing through’, she said, and sailed on.
– Gawain Towler writing of Anne Widdecombe
Probably a Joyce Grenfell reference on Miss Widdecombe’s part:
So, stately as a galleon I sail across the floor…
Yes indeed.
Very good.
Drat. I had the same thought as Zerren but he beat me to it. An apt song indeed. RIP.
The police are now treating her murder as terrorism.
The former chief of the Northumberland Constabulary was on Radio 4 on Sunday morning explaining why the first announcement was only of her death, not of the investigation into whether it was a murder. She said the police’s first duty of care was always to the victim’s family. Until the family had been informed the details couldn’t be released to the public lest family members’ first indication of a possible murder case come from the media.
The makes sense. And it’s consistent with what has happened before. So that was one curiosity cleared up.
A victim of polar factionalism.