Long Table: Peter Mandelson’s Cosy Country Life in Lockdown

Mace | Issue 2 | Uncategorised

From the Archive

Tucked away in Wiltshire, Peter Mandelson read his way through lockdown, when he wasn't zooming into the Lords

I am one of the guilty minority who have enjoyed a rural lockdown and I do not intend to abandon it. Decades ago, before I was elected in Hartlepool in 1992, I spent every waking moment I could in a farm labourer’s cottage in a loop of the River Wye in Herefordshire. The first Kinnock-style remodelling of Labour was conducted from a fixed-line telephone which was the only modern accoutrement in this modest dwelling. Now I am renting a farmhouse in the Pewsey Vale in Wiltshire with excellent broadband, a Sonos system and a Portal TV which keeps me in contact with the most important people in my life. I have two dogs for company, a partner who works in London and visits regularly, and daily walks on the downs and in the woods. I have never experienced a bluebell season of this year’s magnificence. I suffer occasional bouts of cabin fever and was saved the other week by a stay at the excellent new beach-side Machrie Hotel on Islay (no midges and I replenished my stock of Islay malt whisk...

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