Last orders at Maggie’s pub

Cabinet ministers and journalists flocked to the King & Keys on Fleet Street to consult T E Utley, the PM’S guru, reveals his son Charles Utley

‘What was that rather sordid pub called, where your father used to hold court?’ The question led me to remember an extraordinary institution, one which played a surprisingly large part in the development of Thatcherism.

I never thought of the King & Keys on Fleet Street as a ‘sordid pub’. I always found it comfortable and friendly. I spent a great deal of time, in my childhood and youth, there. It was a second home to me and to my siblings.

The King & Keys was next door to the Daily Telegraph; indeed, it was part of the same building. My father, TE Utley (1921-88), wrote for the Telegraph for more than thirty years until 1987, as a leader writer and columnist.

Almost every day, from about noon to three in the afternoon, he was in the King & Keys. Because it was in the City of London, the pub was allowed to stay open until 3pm, rather than 2.30pm, under the old licensing laws.

Then, from about six in the evening until my mother came to pick him up (at about eight), he sat in his usual place in the pub, just to the right of the entrance as you walked in. His secretary would generally be with him, along with several other drinking companions. My father was blind; hence the need for his wife to pick him up and for his secretary to be on hand to go to the bar.

From the 1960s to the 1980s, my father was, as one obituarist put it, the chief political voice of the Telegraph (he wrote for both the daily and Sunday papers).

There were other political writers. But my father, perhaps because he was also thought of as a sort of in-house philosopher to the Conservative Party, bore most of the burden.

Not, it has to be said, that it was a great burden. The time he spent writing was not enormous. Shortly after returning from the pub at three o’clock, he would attend the editorial conference. That would last about half an hour. He would then go to his room and dictate the leader, before taking it to the editor. Then he made his way back to the King & Keys.

In this horrid, puritanical age, all those hours spent in a pub would be thought

appalling. But I think the puritans are wrong. The King & Keys played a large part in my father’s work, and also in his philanthropy.

Who were all those people who sat with him in the pub? They were all sorts – and by no means all Tories.

Colin Welch (my father’s predecessor as Deputy Editor of the Daily Telegraph, from 1964 until 1980, and one of the finest mimics I’ve ever known) was a regular. Peregrine Worsthorne, later editor of the Sunday Telegraph, hardly ever came; he preferred El Vino’s as being better suited to his station in life. But his wife Claudie – secretary to Michael Wharton, who wrote his satirical column under the pseudonym Peter Simple – felt more at home in the King & Keys than El Vino’s. Wharton was there pretty much every day, but he tended to sit on his own at the bar. There were the journalists John O’sullivan and Frank Johnson, and Charles Moore, later the Telegraph editor.

I think it fair to say that Charles probably shared Perry Worsthorne’s superior attitude to a mere pub – in a very touching piece in the Spectator, after my father’s death, he referred to the King & Keys as ‘that vile pub’.

But the journalists actually tended to be in the minority. Politicians were regular attenders. The Tories were in the majority. I got used to finding Sir Keith Joseph, Margaret Thatcher’s Education Secretary, and John Biffen, her Trade Secretary, at my father’s side when I turned up for a free drink. But it wasn’t unusual to find Peter Shore, the Labour Shadow Chancellor, there. I can’t remember seeing Mrs Thatcher in the pub, but her daughter, Carol, did take to turning up.

My father was tireless in the help he gave to the young. Those who wanted to become journalists or politicians would flock to the King & Keys, and all would be given whatever help he could offer. As I look through the newspapers today, I see famous columnists I first remember as callow youths sitting just to the right of the entrance to the King & Keys.

And then there were the Utley children. We were among the most regular attenders from a very early age. Before adulthood, we would come with our mother. Later, we would make our way there independently; I perhaps more than the others because I became a barrister and had chambers in the Temple.

We always felt at home in the King & Keys. However illustrious my father’s drinking pals were, they all knew that his children were equal members of the company.

I have particularly fond memories of the relationship between Colin Welch and Catherine, my youngest sibling, when she was about eight. Colin would buy her a lemonade and then, always addressing her as “CLA” (Catherine Lucy Ann), would solemnly commission an article from her, ignoring the Cabinet ministers eager for his attention.

The presiding officer was Mark, the publican. He nearly always succeeded in guiding tourists away from the Utley Corner, if they tried to occupy it before my father arrived. More importantly, he was always prepared to take a cheque from my father, even though it was touch and go whether it would be honoured by the bank; the idea that Thatcherism was created by millionaires is far from the truth.

I googled the King & Keys today. Very sad news – it’s now a Mexican takeaway. The Telegraph left Fleet Street in 1987. The King & Keys closed in 2007.

Still, even if the newspapers had stayed in Fleet Street, it could never have survived all those dreary, teetotal journalists.