Always in love
June 5, 1983
On this day, Alan Clark writes in his diary that he is ‘madly in love’. It is with Frances Holland. She is his 22-year-old Labour opponent in the elections taking place later this week. ‘Her hair is always shiny and lovely,’ writes Clark. “Perhaps I can distract her at the count on Thursday and kiss her in one of those big janitors’ cupboards off the Lower Guildhall.” Clark is elected. He writes nothing more about kissing.
A few days later, Clark is finally appointed to an insignificant role in The Lady’s government. It is time for a new romance. Jenny Easterbrook is his ‘personal private secretary’. She has ‘very pale skin and large violet eyes’. Clark is in love again. However, he seems to stand no chance whatsoever. Clark writes that she makes her opinion of him clear ‘several times’, without expressing her thoughts.
Easterbrook regards him, according to Clark, as a ‘chauvinist lout.’ She completely fails to understand how he made it to Undersecretary and thinks his departure is a matter of ‘weeks, not months’.
In the diary entry in which he expresses his admiration for his personal assistant, Clark also mentions a meeting with ‘the coven’, the witches’ circle. According to a footnote, it concerns ‘three female blood relatives’ whom Clark has known ‘for years’.
This seemingly somewhat vague description has major consequences. Journalists suspect that there is more going on and set out to investigate. They don’t have to search long and uncover Valerie Harkness and her daughters Josephine and Alison. It appears that Clark has had a relationship with all three. Valerie sells her side of the story to the News of the World. This generates new publicity surrounding the Diaries, which by that time were just being released in paperback.
Although the rest of the world can’t seem to get enough of Clark’s philandering, his wife Jane reacts matter-of-factly. Interviewed on the BBC program Woman’s Hour, she says that they were ‘a fantastic couple when we were together’. However, Clark spent a large part of his time in London, while she lived in a drafty castle in Kent. “Perhaps I shouldn’t have let the reins loose,” says Jane.
However, she also has another explanation for her husband’s behavior. “I was sixteen and Alan thirty when we got married. But in reality, he was twelve. I think this applies to many men.” More on Clark’s immaturity next time.
Haha!