Emma Soames This isn’t because they’ve been at the Flaxel, the new Botox, but because they are young. Cameron, at 43, is the youngest PM since the Dark Ages, and the other two are, respectively, 49 and 38. It is understandable that he would wish to surround himself with his peer group. But you’d never guess from the ages of the new crop that we live in an ageing society where there are more than 15 million people over 50 and rising.
Where are the wise old heads, the silverbacks? True, there’s Ken Clarke and Vince Cable but that’s about it. Politics has become, like the top levels of sport, a young man’s game. The current Cabinet is also younger than most boards of directors. The average age of a CEO is 53, 10 years older than Cameron, while George Osborne is nine years younger than the average Footsie Finance Director.
Speaking from my own experience of crossing this Rubicon, I firmly believe that until you’ve blown out a lot of candles you don’t really "get it" – you don’t really understand the realities of life as it is experienced by older people. So, in my view, every government department should have a silverback in residence, a grey guru who will put things in context and point out the pooh-traps. It may be annoying to have the news read only by young cuties but it would be a lot worse having a government taking decisions that have avoidable side-effects purely because there was no voice of experience involved. I’m sure that Cameron isn’t ageist and his performance with a Saga audience during the election campaign was both effective and empathetic.
I also accept that this country cannot be governed purely for the benefit of the over-50s. But our voices need to be heard in the highest councils and at present I don’t get the feeling they are.
Another change for the better would be a return of stability in government departments. The benighted Department for Work and Pensions probably needed to install revolving doors over the past decade, as no fewer than eight ministers were appointed and then moved on from the post in just under nine years, some of them staying there less than a year. You’d certainly never find a business changing its senior manager that often without its share price feeling the negative effects. Indeed, I have been told that changing bosses frequently looks flighty and we don’t want that of our ministries, now do we?
When buying books with a friend at Heathrow I noticed that he had bought three hefty, unreadable tomes he was about to lug across the world. I suggested that since he’d only bought stuff he ought to read, he also needed to buy books he would actually read.
Many books figure in the bestselling lists but remain unread, like Moby Dick and anything by Stephen Hawking. The category produces dark horses and the latest to be thrown on to my slush pile actually won the Booker Prize last year.
Well, have you read to the end of Wolf Hall? Honestly? I tried to get into Hilary Mantel’s novel twice and gave up after 50 pages.
I thought there was something wrong with my concentration or my ability to appreciate historical fiction. But then I confided in a literary friend who had the same problem. So we asked other people and this wildly eclectic straw poll has so far thrown up two people who are enjoying Wolf Hall and 35 who gave up long before Thomas Cromwell meets his maker. I suppose books are a bit like food – there are concoctions you admire from afar like offal but end up pushing around the plate, and stuff like cottage pie that you actually eat with relish.
Surprisingly, given my recent track record, I’ve just finished the latest novel by Piers Paul Read. The Misogynist is a telling portrait of an older man after a miserable divorce – his wife has left him for one of his oldest friends. It builds up a well-observed portrait of middle-class London life for the older single man. It’s hilariously funny at moments when, for instance, the narrator (who shares one or two characteristics with his creator), analyses his new affair like a business transaction and itemises exactly how much money it is costing him – from the price of a long weekend in Venice down to the weekly cost of the Viagra he is taking. I bet Piers Paul Read wouldn’t buy a book without finishing it – he’d force-feed it to himself while contemplating the £18.99 it cost him.
Buy Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel at a discount from Saga Books.