This was not how Michael Howard, the outgoing Tory leader, intended it to be. When he announced his resignation in May, Mr Howard anticipated that the party would accept his proposed reform of the leadership election procedures that would put the decision making process back in the hands of MPs, rather than local members. Tory activists and MPs gather in some uncertainty about who will lead them into the next election. But something they can be certain about is that the choice of leader is firmly in their hands. “I watched one match last summer,” he moaned in an interview with a former England captain, “and there was clapping and shouting after every ball It was quite appalling.”. This week’s gathering in Blackpool has the potential to be the most exciting Conservative Party conference in some time. Sadly, there are still some vestiges of the bad old days; relics from a time when cricket was the preserve of a snobby elite and duller than the Oval in fading light.

Meet Robin Marlar, the new president of Marylebone Cricket Club. There is a lot about modern cricket – and, one suspects, the modern world – that Mr Marlar finds hard to stomach Enthusiasm is one of them. He was also fiercely independent: despite the onset of dementia in his last years, nothing was going to stop him dying at his beloved Trewollack.. Thanks to England’s glorious victory over Australia in the recent Ashes series, cricket is more popular than it has been in many decades in this country. Players such as Andrew “Freddie” Flintoff, Kevin Pietersen and Michael Vaughan have become role models due to their competitiveness and conduct on the field. “Nothing to do with the quality, Smail, it’s a measure of the VISCOSITY!”He was always a very practical man, a good draughtsman and artist, skilled at designing toys and games for his children.

Not being a man of compromise, he started with marmalade and fish pie (although he didn’t serve them together). Both proved immediately successful, although I was at first baffled by the marmalade classification: *, ?and *. It was a revelation to see Oxford’s foremost Roman history tutor driving a small tractor at great speed up “the policies” (he loved that term), a Princeton baseball cap clamped to his silver locks. except I’ve found this new drink – virtually non-alcoholic – it’s called. vermouth!” So we drank half a pint of Martini before dinner each day.Lepper taught himself to cook. But he came through it and (in fine Lepperian form) assured me: “Look, Smail, I nearly drank my life away Too much whisky, so the quack’s banned it I’m afraid it’s only cider and sherry now.

It was a revelation to learn that Elisabeth “wasn’t very good at early mornings”, so breakfast was cooked by Frank disguised as the irascible Mrs Macpherson, who was said to appear on her tricycle from St Columb to fry the bacon and “crowtons” for the slumbering guests.After Elisabeth’s death in 1994, Frank did – by his own admission – hit the bottle and came near to death. The play was published very handsomely by Oxford University Press and Lepper even persuaded the great Eduard Fraenkel to take part. Another tour de force was his review (in the college journal, The Pelican, for 1954) of the Oxford telephone directory.In the early 1960s, Frank and Elisabeth saw, fell in love with and bought Trewollack House. Elisabeth’s taste and Frank’s practical skills created one of the loveliest small country houses in England and some of us were privileged to spend an annual week with them. In these days of narrower and narrower specialisation, let it be remembered that Lepper’s article “Some Rubrics in the Athenian Quota Lists” (Journal of Hellenic Studies, 1962) broke new ground 10 years before Russell Meiggs’s The Athenian Empire.But Lepper’s writing was not confined to classical books and journals.