How novel, Norman! ‘Talking labrador’ Ben inspires Tebbit’s first children’s book
AS A Cabinet Minister in Margaret Thatcher’s Government, Norman Tebbit was renowned for his brutal style of politics.
He was once called a semi-housetrained polecat and nicknamed ‘the Chingford skinhead’ after his Essex constituency. The satirical TV puppet show Spitting Image fuelled the image by portraying him as a snarling, leather-jacketed thug.
But Lord Tebbit displays a softer side to his character in a children’s novel he has written, called Ben’s Story. It features a talking dog, a yellow labrador called Ben, and Sam, a 14-year-old boy.
Ben is named after Lord Tebbit and his wife Margaret’s own labrador, who died five years ago.
The book is billed as a ‘contemporary story about murder, friendship, adversity and personal struggle’.
Sam’s father is killed in a car crash, which also leaves Sam paralysed. But the boy suspects it was not an accident, and, aided by Ben and Alice Bacon, an eccentric old lady and former spy, he embarks on a gripping adventure as he tries to discover the truth about the death of his father, a television journalist who was on the trail of drugs gangsters.
It is the latest chapter in former Tory chairman Lord Tebbit’s unlikely literary career, following the publication five years ago of a successful recipe book, The Game Cook, featuring his favourite pheasant and partridge dishes.
In spite of his traditional Tory views, Ben’s Story is set in the modern world and tackles issues such as divorce and drug addiction.
It also draws heavily on the Tebbits’ own ordeal in the IRA’s 1984 bomb attack on the Grand Hotel in Brighton. Lady Tebbit was left with crippling injuries and Lord Tebbit, now 82, was lucky to survive after being buried in the rubble.
Like Lady Tebbit, young Sam is treated at Stoke Mandeville hospital and has to come to terms with being wheelchair-bound. And again like Lady Tebbit, he receives support from a specially trained help dog.
In part, the book is Lord Tebbit’s tribute to the real Ben, who was provided by West Sussex-based Canine Partners, an organisation that supplies dogs to help disabled people enjoy greater independence.
Lord Tebbit gives the fictional Ben the magical power to talk to Sam, to help the youngster find out what really happened to his father. The book also features people and places linked to Lord Tebbit’s political past. He says the spy Lady Alice is inspired by Dame Daphne Park, one of Britain’s most celebrated spies, who died, aged 88, in 2010. Dame Daphne, sometimes described as ‘a cross between James Bond and Miss Marple’, and Lord Tebbit knew each other well and sat together in the Lords.
Lord Tebbit said last night: ‘I just felt like writing something different. Events are seen more from the dog’s point of view than a human’s.
‘It is a work of fiction, but many of the places, such as the dog school at Canine Partners, do exist. And those who knew Daphne Park, a brave and distinguished MI6 secret agent in Russia and Africa, will realise Alice bears more than a passing resemblance to her.
‘Sadly there all too many boys who suffer severe spinal injuries and have to cope with life confined to a wheelchair. Ben the yellow lab is like many of the help dogs trained at Canine Partners, and is quite a lot like my dear old friend.’
Rupert Matthews, of Lord Tebbit’s publishers, Bretwalda, said: ‘When Lord Tebbit talks about his fictional characters suffering sudden, life-shattering injury, he knows from his own experience how it feels.’
Ben’s Story is published on June 1.
LORD TEBBIT is one of the most misrepresented figures in British politics. A kind and humorous man, devoted to his severely disabled wife Margaret, he has uncomplainingly put up with his portrayal as a thuggish and heartless brute.
He has now put some of his searing (and uplifting) experiences into a book for children, in which one of the main characters is a very remarkable dog, and another is a badly injured child. But there is not one single mention of bikes. We wish him every success. And while he is unlikely to be the next J.K. Rowling, perhaps he will find this new enterprise finally dispels the old image of the Chingford Skinhead.