Sir Roy Denman: Obituary

I heard today that one of my authors from the days of Politico's Publishing died last week. Sir Roy Denman was a true British mandarin. He wrote a brilliant memoir called The Mandarin's Tale, which wasn't exactly a bestseller, but was one of those books that just had to be published. My colleague Sean Magee was a great friend of Denman's and was working with him on a new book on Anglo-German relations since 1871. I suspect he never finished it. Denman was a rabid pro-European and played a leading part in the 1973 EEC entry negotiations. There's a very good obituary in the Independent which contains the following anecdote. "Another tale that must be told is Roy Denman's encounter with Churchill, when the great man had come to see Peter Thorneycroft, President of the Board of Trade, to whom Denman was Assistant Private Secretary. Denman records the occasion in The Mandarin's Tale: At that moment the door to the inner sanctum opened and Jove, in the form of Winston Churchill, appeared. He looked as though he had just woken up from a post-prandial sleep,and did not seem in the best of tempers. Gazing at me with evident distaste, he enquired grumpily and loudly of Peter Oates, one of his Secretaries, "Who's he?" "The President of the Board of Trade's Private Secretary, Sir," replied Oates. The great man was then pretty deaf. "Who?", he repeated. "THE PRESIDENT OF THE BOARD OF TRADE'S PRIVATE SECRETARY," bellowed Oates. "Huh," said Churchill scornfully: "Tell him to bugger off". I did.