John was an enigma, what the Ancients called “sui generis” and I defy anyone to have put him in any sort of category.
There was wonderfully cynical observation of aspects of life and people and the absurdities of both, particularly those whom he did not respect; much of this can be read in his recent book “Memorable Encounters”.
Even from the time I met him on arrival at Slim in August 1955, when he was RSO in 1st Bn there were signs of an extraordinary life ahead of him which he did little to conceal; indeed I remember, with his fellow subalterns, being privileged to hear his entirely fanciful excerpts from speeches he was expecting to make at the Mansion House.
Although President of the Cambridge Union to which he had been elected, is a well trodden path for those with political ambition, I don’t think that that was John’s plan at that stage in his life; but making serious money definitely was and Warburgs was a helpful start enabling him to buy Trewinnard, a large house and small farm in Cornwall. Here, unconvincingly calling himself a farmer, he delegated flower and bulb production to Miloska while he, recently elected an MP, attended to matters of national importance in London.
During John’s campaign for his first General Election I believe to be apocryphal the report that he used a megaphone to persuade the good people of St Ives to vote for him by announcing “I am Nott, your Conservative candidate”; came the rejoinder from someone in the crowd “well who are you then, mate?”.
At the time of his presidency of the Cambridge Union, a formal photograph was taken of him stretched, languidly, full length on a sofa; it could have come straight out of central casting for a part in Brideshead Revisited. I had had a copy for years and he was very disappointed when, staying with me recently, I was unable to find it. Anyone else, photographed in a similar pose, would have been met with a dismissive and caustic reaction.
I was always surprised that John, who did not suffer fools gladly, rose to the top of the greasy pole of politics where, although he was highly intelligent, I imagine that compromise is a necessary element of success.
That leads me forcefully to de-bunk any suggestion that he fell out with Margaret Thatcher after the Falklands war. I asked John about this when we had lunch together very recently and he said that, of course, they had disagreements, but only when he told her that he had decided to leave politics and she wanted him to stay on as Defence Secretary did she make her displeasure very plain. Interestingly, when John went to the Palace for his audience of the Queen, which lasted half an hour with no one else present, Her Majesty also expressed disappointment that he was leaving; would it be impertinent to suggest that, perhaps, the Prime Minister had mentioned to the Queen the possibility of her Defence Secretary being persuaded to change his mind.
During the run-up to the Brexit referendum, it would not have been possible to have found two more ardent Brexiteers than John and I; neither of us could think of a single reason why anyone would choose to remain in the European Union. We had arranged to spend four days in John’s son William’s cottage in Devon, intentionally to fish for sea-trout, but actually whipping each other up into a xenophobic frenzy in which no adjective was left unused.
For our stay, John had confirmed that I was happy to eat curry, although I hadn’t realised that I was going to have to play my cards carefully to avoid having to have it for breakfast as well as all other meals. On our last morning, John arrived with yet another large bag of curry, from which he extracted the poppadom, carefully wrapped in greaseproof paper, and which for some reason (a bad one) he put in the oven; evidence that that was a mistake came when the smoke alarms in the kitchen and on the upstairs landing went off, emitting a noise so intolerable that one could imagine it being used to test the psychiatric resilience of aspirants to join the SAS. I shall spare you the full account of the unsuccessful attempts by a former Secretary of State for Defence and a retired land agent to silence this crescendo, but suffice it to say that the former ended up up a ladder tearing out of the ceiling by their roots the offending equipment, all more technically sophisticated trials having failed.
At our lunch together on the 15th September, although obviously tired and dressed as though he had spent the previous night under a cardboard box somewhere, John was, as ever, the same stimulating and entertaining companion.
I was very lucky to have known this man for so long and shall remember him with great affection.
