To the Brussels Press Club this evening to listen to Baroness Jan Royall, Leader of the Labour Party in the House of Lords, deliver this year’s John Fitzmaurice Memorial Lecture (I had the privilege of delivering it last year). Like me, Jan knew John very well and for a long time. We cannot always have speakers who knew the man but there is a friendly tinge to the proceedings when the lecture is delivered by a friend. Jan worked with Neil Kinnock for a very long time and we became good friends whilst I was working on my biography. It was good to catch up at the dinner afterwards. Jan was particularly interesting on the restraints and limited resources of the Opposition in British politics and the frustrations that come from these. Her speech, meanwhile, was a critical analysis of the contradictory forces within a coalition which was formed out of post-electoral expediency rather than, as as historically been the case in the UK, to govern during or after some cataclysmic event (such as a war). At times like these I wish I was a political scientist again; there are so many fascinating things going on.