Iain Duncan Smith yesterday stepped out in public in his new role as a novelist, joining a highbrow panel on Radio 4's Start the Week.
As Andrew Marr, the BBC's all-purpose pundit, observed during the programme, "there is enormous cruelty now in the press coverage of public life." An example was the decision to invite Mr Duncan Smith on to the programme.
An extract from his thriller, The Devil's Tune, published this Thursday, appeared in Saturday's Telegraph alongside a savage review - "terrible, terrible, terrible" - by Sam Leith. Naturally it was page one news in the crueller Sundays. One could imagine the outgoing Tory leader's fellow panelists, literary grandees AS Byatt and Doris Lessing, wrinkling their noses and resolving to punch his lights out, while the remaining panellist, historian Richard J. Evans, held him down.
Not a bit of it. They were all kind - even though IDS began his first contribution by saying: "Sorry, I haven't had time to read the book." They all understood: the poor man has been pretty busy. Yet he repeated it when discussing two other books under discussion, though not his own, a political thriller set in the United States.
The trick of survival was to block out the horrors of war, they agreed. That was Iain's formula for the Tory leadership crisis too. Reading last week's newspapers, he had felt as if he must be a paedophile.
"It is rather like almost being detached from yourself in one of those near-death experiences when somebody sits above himself and watches in a rather detached way," IDS told Marr - who had, after all, been part of the press pack which tore him apart.
The surprise was IDS's admission, evidently sincere, that his visits to tough Glaswegian neighbourhhoods really did impress him. "Social justice" must be at the heart of the Tory message.
The panel treated him as the British always do the Kinnocks and Hagues whom they have helped to destroy: Sorry, luv, we didn't mean it. "I was very impressed by the beautiful way you behaved, not petty, nasty or spiteful," observed that redoubtable old communist, Doris Lessing. The press is so spiteful, agreed AS Byatt. By such cunning devices, they also avoided discussing his book.
