Rumour, tittle-tattle and gossip
THIRTEEN years have elapsed since Paul Routledge was last famous. Mr Routledge, the author of the biography of the chancellor, Gordon Brown, that everyone is talking about (Simon and Schuster, £17.99), was then a journalist on the Times, covering the national coal strike. The queen happened to be touring the paper's offices. Perhaps not knowing that Mr Routledge had not yet finished his long journey rightwards, her majesty was unwise enough to make a remark to him that blamed the dispute on Arthur Scargill, the miners' leader. Mr Routledge, not a man to observe the conventions, then blabbed this out on the radio.
This article appeared in the Britain section of the print edition under the headline “Rumour, tittle-tattle and gossip”
From the January 24th 1998 edition
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