Having recently written a blog on how moved I was by the sincerity and affection shown in Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery’s letters to Alan Howarth, I was reminded of an altogether less endearing anecdote concerning Roy Jenkins’s correspondence. In reading John Campbell’s excellent Roy Jenkins: A Well-Rounded Life, I was struck by Jenkins’s fondness for ranking, categorising and making finely calibrated judgements about the world around him.

Amusingly, this habit seems to have extended even to his love letters. Rather than simply signing off with affection, Jenkins would on occasion feel compelled to share precisely how much affection he felt for them at the given moment. Some of his letters ended with variations on “Too much love” and “Quite a lot of love”, while on one notable occasion he ended with the brutally honest “At best an average amount of love”. Despite doing surprisingly well for himself with the ladies, suffice to say I won’t be taking love letter cues from Roy Jenkins.