Let Loose in Luton

I travel so much abroad with my journalism and lecturing that I am reluctant to stray beyond the M25 when I am in England — or outside the validity of my zone 1-6 Oyster card, to be precise. Party conferences are an exception. However, a short-notice request to talk to the Luton 41 Club this evening about my work led me to that Bedfordshire town, for the first time in my life. Emerging from the station into High Town, I was astonished to hear everyone around me talking Polish. Until I wandered into the Portuguese café that is. And then passed a Pakistani shop, opposite the Indonesian restaurant. It isn’t just London that is multi-cultural these days. However, before I was whisked off to the Bowling Green Pavilion for dinner and my spiel, I had a drink in the sun at a very traditional English pub, where there wasn’t even any blasted piped music. So I was able to make great strides into Andrew Hosken’s gripping recent biography of Ken Livingstone (Arcadia, £15.99) and from that learnt that in June 1977, Ken pipped a certain Vincent Cable by two votes to become the Labour candidate for Hampstead. I chortled over the outraged response from one of Hampstead’s liberal intellectual Labour Party members at this development; he quoted Ovid: ‘Video meliora, proboque; deteriora sequor’ (I see better things, I follow the worst). Oh, Life is such a glorious kaleidoscope!