The joys of boarding school

The “dead hand of officialdom” has cost us dearly

Britain was not alone in being hit with an infected blood scandal, says Robert Shrimsley in the FT. But while other countries “faced up to their errors”, we turned away. Canada set up a Royal Commission in 1993. Ireland established a tribunal and compensation scheme in 1997. France “prosecuted its premier, ministers and officials” in 1999. But by the 2010s, the UK Treasury was still blocking a public inquiry into the scandal “for fear of the cost of compensation”. If you seek “the fabled Deep State”, here it is. It is not found in campaigning civil servants, or in government economists daring to question the wisdom of Liz Truss. The deep state is found “in the dead hand of officialdom”, and the prioritising of institutions “over the people they are meant to serve”.

The 3,000 lives claimed by infected blood are the worst but not the only tragedy caused by the “narrow groupthink and cold paternalism” of Britain’s institutions. Think of the sub-postmasters wrongly prosecuted due to a faulty IT system; of legitimate British citizens deported due to the Windrush scandal. In each case, injustice continued “well after it became clear that something had gone wrong”. On top of that, officials in the NHS, Post Office and Home Office closed ranks and dodged accountability, and politicians were happy to collude in kicking the can down the road. As for the victims? “Well of course it is all very sad, but mistakes happen you know.”

“Thanks to the telly, I’m as rich as Croesus!”

John Betjeman, who died 40 years ago this month, was one of the rare poets who made money, says Jonathan Glancey in UnHerd. His Collected Poems, first published in 1958 and still in print, “has sold well over two-and-a-half million copies”. Betjeman wasn’t scared of spending his money either. In 2006, Barry Humphries recalled “generous lunches” with Betjeman, attended by the likes of Kingsley Amis, Philip Larkin and often “an Anglican priest or two”. Roast beef and lots of champagne was on the menu, and Betjeman would always pay – exclaiming, with a cackle, that “Thanks to the telly, I’m as rich as Croesus!”

But though Betjeman did well in terms of book sales and TV appearances, he was often “labelled superficial” by poetry buffs. Maxwell Fry, a modernist architect he knew, dismissed him as “a journalist and a Fleet Street man – and a popularist”. In truth, Betjeman was complex. Yes, his depiction of women could be “absurd”: his verse was filled with domineering “jolly hockey-stick types on bicycles and in Sussex tea rooms”. But he could also be “unexpectedly profound and passionate”, especially in his “sense of place”. At St Pancras, where his statue gazes up at a roof he helped preserve, the inscription, borrowing some of his lines, reads: “And in the shadowless unclouded glare, Deep blue above us fades to whiteness where, A misty sealine meets the wash of air. / John Betjeman, 1906 – 1984, poet, who saved this glorious station”.

All aboard the Chairman’s Set

Millionaire businessman Jeremy Hosking is the proud owner of Britain’s only private steam train, says Elissa Hunter in The Daily Telegraph. It’s called the Chairman’s Set, and consists of nine luxuriously repurposed Caledonian Sleeper coaches, all in the classic 1950s British Rail “blood and custard” livery. There are deluxe ensuite bedrooms; a private dining car and two bar cars, each with pianos; and a drawing room car with lattice doors and a model locomotive. Each carriage is finished with marquetry by the small family business that worked on the Titanic.

Once the finishing touches are complete, the train – which is based at Crewe Diesel Depot in Cheshire – will carry around 20 passengers and 20 staff members on private trips. These journeys require enormous planning – routing availability is limited, and you have to stop every 75 miles to get more water for the locomotive. But it has already been on test runs to destinations including St Ives, Fort William and Glenfinnan, where it spent the night on the viaduct made famous by the Harry Potter films. There have been “several non-test runs”, too: a hedge-fund manager recently hired out the train to take his family from London to Scotland. As Hosking says: “Every British boy growing up dreams of becoming an engine driver.”