THINK ROBERT WAGNER FROM TV’S ‘HART-TO-HART AND ‘TWO-AND-A-HALF MEN’

Lord David Owen, Blenheim Literary Festival, Oxford

******** This guy’s a hearthrob. No question of that. Like a very British - though ageing - George Clooney or Jean-Paul Belmondo.
And that’s remarkable because -
1.  Lord David Owen is a politician
2. He must be in his Eighties
3. Oh, did I say he’s a politician?
Charm just oozes out of him; a little more and he’d be Eamon Holmes; a little less and he’d be Phillip Schofield.
But admirably he hasn’t let his matinee idol good looks and ‘purr-fect’ oration distract his clearly brilliant brain from working.
Which is why he’s just appeared at the Festival to discuss his latest book “Cabinet’s Finest Hour: The Hidden Agenda of May 1940’ in which he tells the story of the pivotal coalition war cabinet meetings held in the Spring of that year.
It was a brilliant discussion, hosted by journalist Peter Hennessy and such was the quality of their conversation, I wished they’d stayed all afternoon.
But hey, that wasn’t to be.
Nevertheless, it was undoubtedly the current highlight of this year’s event (and to think I didn’t even really want to go… I mean - political history, come on?).
With an entry price of £12, the festival organisers were giving it away, reflected by the full audience.
Though honestly, they could have made better provision for some of the swooning blue rinses.

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