In his later life, travelling on the train home one day, the former Conservative Party leader Alec Douglas-Home was approached by an elderly lady who told him how she and her husband thought it a great tragedy that he had never been prime minister. To this, Douglas-Home is said to have politely replied: “As a matter of fact I was, but only for a very short time.”
Apocryphal or not, Douglas-Home’s life is filled with such tales of self-deprecation. Having served as prime minister for less than a year before losing power to Harold Wilson in 1964, he is now little remembered at all. After a notable life of service and achievement he is reduced to being a piece of trivia; a Pointless answer in a pub quiz.
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