Welcoming Sarah Vine, author of “How Not to Be a Political Wife”!
Our chat features some hilarious moments, from first meeting Michael Gove (the worst Skier in the world), to her children thinking she was a lizard person. We talk about the humans behind politics, and the mental toll from being in the public eye.
Books mentioned in this episode:
“How Not to Be a Political Wife” by Sarah Vine
Inkspot Publishing receives a commission for any Amazon sales made through the above affiliate links.
Transcript:
Cathy (00:00)
a big welcome to Sarah Vine, who is award-winning journalist, ex-MP spouse and author of How Not to Be a Political Wife, which was such a good read. I actually read it in the summer, because do remember we were supposed to chat in the summer before everyone went away? And then I…
Sarah (00:18)
Yeah.
Cathy (00:21)
I recently listened to it on Audible, which was just to refresh my memory and it was so brilliant listening to it in your voice. So there’s quite a well what was that like?
Sarah (00:30)
It took me four days to record it. And I have to say, if I ever write another book, I shall definitely record it before I say that the publishers can print it because I found so many mistakes when I was reading it aloud.
Cathy (00:45)
Oh, did you? Was it? But do you,
I presume you just mean typos, right?
Sarah (00:50)
Yeah, just sort of typos and you know how all writers have sort of verbal tics, words that they use too much? I have a few and they were just there. And it’s really different reading aloud. I I’d read the proof, I don’t know, 27,000 times, but I’d never picked up on any of them until I read it out loud and realized what I was doing. So there’s quite a well that’s a top tip for any writer. Always read your…
Cathy (00:57)
Yes.
It is a top
tip.
Sarah (01:16)
Look
out loud to yourself because you realise all the mistakes that you’ve made.
Cathy (01:21)
That’s true. And actually it’s only since since I started doing podcasts that I realized how often I say actually, probably and, you know, very, yeah, you know, that’s that’s definitely a top one of mine as well. So there’s quite a well, yes. Anyway, it was it was such an illuminating read and I really enjoyed it, first of all, because it
Sarah (01:30)
I say, you know, that’s my one.
Yeah. Yeah. Terrible. Awful.
Cathy (01:45)
shines a spotlight on the behind the scenes stuff that was going on at the time. And it really made me think that it’s such a pity that Anne Boleyn or know Catherine of Aragon never got to write their memoirs.
Sarah (01:59)
my
goodness, yes, because of course their history was written by the men. It wasn’t written by them, it was written by the victors. I’m sure Anne Boleyn was a perfectly nice woman and probably would have had lots of interesting things to say about the disgusting personal habits of Henry VIII or whatever. you know.
Cathy (02:09)
What was it?
Well,
exactly. Anyway, so it was great to hear about recent history from an insider’s perspective and a woman’s perspective as well. I know it was met with quite a lot of shock by people like Simon Heffer. And I read his review of your book. It was really scathing.
Sarah (02:35)
It was really
weird. was almost sort of psychotic. It was bizarre. I know Simon and I’ve always been very nice with him. I mean, I’ve always got on with him, Anyway, he was furious about it.
Cathy (02:45)
I know, actually to be fair, he did say that future historians will be grateful for the book because it will give them, as we already discussed, an insider’s perspective. I think what really shocked him was how personal you became. And I don’t mean about other people. I mean, really lay out your own personal struggles a lot. And you’re very honest about, you know, your family background, your struggles with health and mental health issues and,
Sarah (03:05)
Yeah.
Thank
Cathy (03:14)
And I think that he just can’t believe that someone’s willing to, I suppose he would regard it as air their dirty laundry in public.
Sarah (03:21)
Oversharing.
think that’s correct. I think he comes at it from a very male perspective. Simon’s a very intelligent man, but he is very much a kind of old school man. And I think that he was just a bit horrified at the honesty. Because I think the thing is when I wrote the book, I didn’t want to write your average political sort of memoir. Not that it’s just a political memoir, but.
It has a lot of politics in it. But most political memoirs tend to just be quite revisionist. They’re just, you know, “why I was right about everything and everyone else was wrong.” Or “if everyone had only ever done what I’d said, then it would have been okay.” Shut up muffin, shush. Sorry, that’s my dog. And they tend to gloss over the kind of personal stuff and the human stuff.
because I think often they’re written by men and men don’t want to show weakness, especially political men. They don’t like to weakness. ⁓ And I think heifer comes from that sort of world.
Cathy (04:23)
Yes.
Sarah (04:24)
When I wrote the book, I wanted people to see the weakness because politics is really important in ordinary people’s lives because it affects that we’ve seen just this week with the budget. You know, the decisions that politicians make and the reasons they make them are really important to understand because they affect everyone’s existence very acutely. And politicians make bad decisions.
often because they are in a state or tired or confused or they don’t have the right support or they’re worried about themselves rather than the country. I wanted people to see the motivations behind what happens in politics because politics is about people and people are very fallible, you know.
Cathy (05:11)
Yes, exactly. And I think you do that really well. And actually, I knew I was going to enjoy your book from the first page because you open with the eve of the Brexit referendum result. And you’re obviously in a total state because by this stage, none of your family are, they’re all furious with you. They all seem to think that you, Sarah Vine, personally orchestrated this result, not taking into account the…
millions of ordinary people who were really fed up with the EU and that it was somehow your fault and you’d fallen out with a lot of friends and you must have felt like you were under siege and then you think about cuddling up to your daughter and you think, oh better not because she’s probably got nits.
Sarah (05:57)
She had terrible nits All the time.
Cathy (05:59)
Well,
that really resonated with me because I remember when my ⁓ dad died, getting my daughter ready for the funeral and thinking I’ll have to deal with her nits later.
Sarah (06:14)
It’s
those very banal things. You you’re your house is on Sky News and the entire press back are outside your front door, but you’ve still got to get your children up and get them to school and you’ve still got to make them brush their teeth. So there’s quite a well it’s, know, the sort of banality of everyday life doesn’t go away just because you’re in the fishbowl.
Cathy (06:36)
Exactly.
Sarah (06:37)
I think that contrast is quite interesting just in human terms because people, tend to think that, if you’re in that situation, then obviously there’s some sort of butler who’s doing that, but that’s not really the case. I mean, there obviously is some butler, obviously.
Cathy (06:51)
And that somehow if you’re… Well, yes, exactly. But
somehow you’re immune from everyday problems and that is absolutely not the case. You are just as fallible and subject to them as everybody else. So there’s quite a well let’s just start with your career because I think that’s often overlooked. Obviously, you were married to someone very high profile, but you…
Sarah (06:57)
Yeah.
Cathy (07:14)
have built up a great career for yourself. that was interesting. Your family background, you grew up in Italy and you had a really difficult time in your family. And there was ⁓ relatives of PTSD after the war and your parents got together at a time, well, they got together because your mother fell pregnant with you, correct?
Sarah (07:35)
Yeah.
Cathy (07:36)
And it was spelled out to you in no uncertain terms that if abortion had been allowed at the time, that would have been your inevitable fate. and actually, funny enough, that probably would have been Michael’s as well, because he was adopted. And so, you know, there’s a sort of. I mean, that’s not why you got together, obviously. ⁓
Sarah (07:48)
Yeah.
No, it’s absolutely
not. There’s a sense right from the start there of being an imposter or someone who shouldn’t really be there. it was my father who said that to me, not my mother, I should point out. My mother would never say such a horrible thing, but it was my father. My father was is… He doesn’t drink anymore, but he used to drink an awful lot.
know, kind of Richard Burton levels of drinking or George Best, you know, proper kind of full, he’s Welsh, know, proper Welsh drinking, which is different from any other industrial of And so, of course, people say things when they’re very drunk that they probably don’t mean and they shouldn’t say, but they do stick, you know, with the person you’re talking to, especially if that person is young.
Cathy (08:27)
Industrial, industrial drinking, yeah.
Yes.
Sarah (08:43)
or a child or impressionable or whatever. And so I think right from the very start, I was given the impression by my father particularly, not by my mother, that I shouldn’t have been there, that I was just a sort of interloper, that I was in the way and that if I hadn’t been there, life would have been so much easier for them.
They were very young when they had me. They were sort of 20. So there’s quite a well that is very young really. And if you think about when you’re in your 20s, the last thing you want to be doing is looking after a child. But that’s what they were doing.
Cathy (09:13)
And also your mother
was about to go to university, wasn’t she?
Sarah (09:16)
Yeah, yeah, she was, yeah.
And they didn’t have anywhere to live. They lived in my Auntie Betty’s spare bedroom with me as a little baby for a couple of years, actually, while my father finished his degree at Swansea. And then he got a job with British Steel and they paid for him to go to university to do a PhD at Oxford.
So there’s quite a well then they went to Oxford and they actually had a cottage in Garlington, which I think was quite nice. I think he was very lucky, they’re very early boomers, born in 46. So there’s quite a well they both benefited from that sort of largesse of the state in those days. So there’s quite a well he was lucky, he was someone who really did step out of his…
family background. And then they headed off to Italy when they were about 25 because they just, they were just very adventurous people. But I think it was pretty difficult and quite surreal, particularly for my mother in the first couple of years of my existence. I think it must have been really hard work.
Cathy (10:23)
Well, it’s never easy having a baby even with, you know, at the best of times. So there’s quite a well, yes. But you did learn to speak Italian very quickly and French as well and you did modern languages at university.
Sarah (10:30)
Nay.
Yeah.
Well, they sort of,
they chucked me in the local primary school when we got to Italy and I think I was five, probably five and half or something like that. I was about twice the size of all the other five and a half year olds.
Cathy (10:51)
I know you describe
it very amusingly in the book that you’re some sort of giant cuckoo.
Sarah (10:55)
it’s.
fitting
fatly in the nest. I can’t, I remember not being able to fit into the, they had those desks which are attached to the chair. I remember not being able to fit into that. I was also catastrophically short-sighted and because I didn’t speak any English, they sort of put me at the back of the class. Sorry, didn’t speak any Italian. Sorry, pardon me. So there’s quite a well they put me at the back of the class, you know, in the way that the Italians did. I’ve got an English person, we’ll put her in the back of the class.
Cathy (11:07)
Yes.
You mean Italian? You didn’t speak any Italian?
Sarah (11:25)
And so I couldn’t see the black board. I had no idea what was going on. for quite a long time, I think my parents thought I was retarded because I basically…
Cathy (11:34)
When did someone get around to getting you a pair of glasses?
Sarah (11:37)
I think I was about eight before they realized that I couldn’t see. I still can’t really see. it’s because of course my parents were very young and then neither of them had any problems with their eyes. So there’s quite a well I don’t think I just don’t think it occurred to them that I would be catastrophically short sighted, which I am. But you my mother had a terrible time with me. I was a force of delivery. So there’s quite a well maybe they squashed my head or something in a funny way. But anyway, ⁓
Cathy (11:39)
wow, it’s quite a long time.
Love you.
Sarah (12:04)
Yes, it was a very chaotic childhood, I’d say. ⁓
Cathy (12:08)
Well, yes,
largely because of the drinking and the peripatetic nature of, well.
Sarah (12:13)
going
out a lot, the partying, yes exactly, was a lot of that, yes, yeah, yeah.
Cathy (12:18)
very expat
thing isn’t it going out a lot and yeah.
Sarah (12:21)
Yes. Yes. Well, I think
the English, the Welsh were exposed to large quantities of very cheap alcohol, which was what Italy was in those days. I mean, I think there was still a communal cellar in the village where we lived. They had a sort of, you know, they would harvest the wines and make the wine and then everybody in the village would get a kind of allocation. Exactly.
Cathy (12:45)
Mascati, Montepulciano!
Sarah (12:48)
I always remember his catchphrase when he was in his mid to late 20s was, we can always leave what we don’t drink. mean, the wine really did flow quite liberally.
Cathy (13:00)
Yes. Now have have your parents read your memoir?
Sarah (13:06)
My mother has read it and my father has not. And that’s because ⁓ he is, know, who he is in the book, which is someone who’s not really interested in any, I just don’t, he just, won’t read it. I know he won’t read it. He won’t read it. I mean, nothing that’s in the book is untrue. I mean, I did actually put more in the book about him.
Cathy (13:24)
Okay, probably just as well. Probably just as
Sarah (13:33)
Because when I first decided I wanted to write a memoir, I thought I would write about my parents because they are quite fascinating actually, particularly my father. He’s a character that, if you put my father in a film and put the things that he used to do in a film, people just wouldn’t believe you. But I think there are a lot of men of that generation who were quite completely off the rails. I think you look at the sort of George Best and the Richard Bertons and those people.
And their behavior was completely, actually outrageous and incredibly self-destructive and destructive to those around them. And I did have this idea that I would write a memoir of a chaotic, mad childhood called The Naked Car Chase. But then it ended up as a teaser in the book. But I did put in lots of stories about my father,
Cathy (14:07)
Yes, it was.
Yes,
Sarah (14:28)
My father’s a terrible man, have your he is my father and I am quite fond of him actually, genuinely. But he is nevertheless a terrible man and anyone who knows me who’s met him will say that. And none of the things that I write about in the book are untrue. And there were many things that I put in that I then took out because I thought they were a bit strong and he is still alive.
But when I sent the book to the publishers, they came back to me and the lawyers came back to me because I was worried that they were going to get very upset. And the only thing they were worried about was that my dad would sue me. That was the only thing that they were worried about. And of course, no, he’s not going to sue me.
Cathy (15:07)
Well, first of all, because he’s not going to read the book. And secondly, because everything you wrote was true. So there’s quite a well yes. OK. Yeah.
Sarah (15:12)
I sent it to my brother
and I said, you know, do you think I’ve been too hard on Roger? he messaged me back and said, not hard enough.
Cathy (15:22)
Yeah, interesting. And actually the naked car chase is very funny. It’s your dad in a drunken fury chasing after your mom who’s decided she’s had enough and you were in the passenger seat, which must’ve been terrifying. and he literally parked, he overtook her and parked his car in front of her and she had no alternative but to come back home.
Sarah (15:23)
you
Yeah.
Yes, yes absolutely.
I mean, I did it.
No, the levels of drama that used to go on in my family, I mean, it was really off the scale and sort of weirdly cinematic in that. I it’s so dramatic, so melodramatic and still is today. if he has to walk a bit further than he wants to walk, it’s like sort of, it’s like King Lear.
Cathy (16:08)
There is an
odd romance in that story as well. I suppose he must have been quite charismatic and I’m sure he’s very good company when he’s drinking. Probably even when he’s not. ⁓
Sarah (16:19)
Yeah.
Yeah, very good company.
And my children call him bad grandpa. And they are simultaneously horrified by him, but they also find his stories very entertaining. So there’s quite a well he is that character. They don’t… Terrible, terrible.
Cathy (16:35)
I’m sure.
Is he a better grandfather than he is? Terrible! a… ⁓
Do you mean in the example he set?
Sarah (16:49)
Well, I mean, he’s
not very interested in them. I mean, he never was interested in the game children and never spent any time with them. And then when he did, all he did was show off and tell them frightening stories, you know, because it’s all about him. He’s a crazy, raging narcissist.
Cathy (17:06)
Yes, yeah, I suppose so. well, what a shame. Anyway, ⁓ but you eventually…
Sarah (17:10)
He probably secretly loves it that I put
him in.
think that’s what, you know, I think he would like, ideally he’d like someone to write a book about him.
Cathy (17:16)
I see. Yes.
Yeah, well actually that’s obviously how it originally started. ⁓ yeah. But eventually you had enough and you insisted that you went to school in the UK and you stayed with your grandmother, is that right? Your Granny Ruth,
Sarah (17:22)
Yeah.
Funny. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
was amazing. She had a terrible life actually, really difficult. Yeah, really tough. She was an army wife. And my grandfather was in Burma and they spent a lot of time in Singapore and the Far East. And I think that he had that thing that a lot of men of that generation had, which is that they were totally destroyed by what they saw and had to do in the war. And of course they came back and then everyone just expects them to go back to being normal husbands and fathers.
Cathy (17:35)
She sounds like it.
Sarah (17:58)
and get a nice job in an office. And I can’t imagine how they could have done that. I mean, my grandfather, was very scarred by his experiences in Burma. He was a chindin. And I know from talking to my uncle Tim, who’s 10 years older than me, so my mother’s youngest sibling, when he was born, my grandmother had terrible postnatal depression.
And my grandfather had her section for two years. So there’s quite a well Tim never saw his mother for the first two years of his life. they sent her away to a clinic and they gave her electroshock therapy. against her will, it must’ve happened to so many women. when they were out in Singapore, she lost a baby because she was giving birth and the army doctor who was assisting was drunk and he just…
Cathy (18:21)
That’s this. ⁓
Sarah (18:40)
killed, essentially killed the baby. My grandfather was, in the jungle, you know, forced to shoot his own men when they were, you know, just awful, awful war stuff. And, they came back to the UK and settled in Bickley in a sort of boxy two up, two down, and he worked in London and
Cathy (18:43)
my word.
Sarah (19:02)
they ended up loathing each they were obviously, I suppose, if you were using modern language, you would say trauma bonded, but basically my grandfather drank himself to death. And Ruth, Ruth didn’t, she had a heart, she had a stroke in the end, but she was great. in a time when my parents were really lost to me because my father was.
completely impossible. And my mother was, I think, very torn and she had my brother to look after. And she was trying to hold her stuff together and it was very difficult. My father was always having affairs, always running off with people and it was just chaos really. And was this kind of model of a stable family life. She was an army wife. So there’s quite a well, she would get up at the same time every morning, seven o’clock.
7.30 there would be tea, in front of the morning news and then tea would be cleared away and there’d be, you there would be breakfast and then there would be cleaning the house and making the beds and doing all the chores and then at 11 o’clock you’d have coffee and then at sort of 11.30 you’d go out shopping. So there’s quite a well it was just, it was a balm for the soul really, anyone who’s grown up in a really chaotic household.
where nothing ever happens at the same time, nothing ever happens the same twice and you just never quite know which way is up. That very outwardly looking, quite boring existence is actually really therapeutic and it was really therapeutic.
Cathy (20:29)
I’m sure it must have
been very reassuring to have that sort of and calm. And you did, you went to school and then you did modern languages at uni, which is a bit of a cheat because you already could speak Italian, good for you. And then
Sarah (20:33)
Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. Total cheese, yes. I don’t think I would have got in otherwise to be honest.
I wasn’t a very good student.
Cathy (20:52)
And then,
and then you got in, but presumably you must have done Italian literature and things like that. It must have been really interesting. And in fact, don’t you quote Dante in the beginning of your book.
Sarah (20:59)
University, yeah,
yes I loved it. I didn’t enjoy all of the course. Funnily enough, I didn’t really like the modern Italian stuff because the woman who taught it was a very annoying communist from Bologna. Used to irritate me with a constant need to politicise every lecture but the guy who taught the humanist
Italian stuff was fantastic, really good and taught it beautifully and brilliantly. And it really started my love long affair with that time that, you know, the sort of 1300s, 1300s, everything to do with the work, the writing, the art. I loved all that stuff. And then I just, I don’t know, I came out of university in the teeth of that terrible recession, sort of 92, I think it was.
Cathy (21:34)
Hmm.
Sarah (21:45)
No jobs. So there’s quite a well I got job working for Hobbs and I was their customer services officer, which wasn’t really a job. But basically I think they employed me because a lot of their suppliers were Italian. So there’s quite a well I could chat to their suppliers. So there’s quite a well I was a sort of free translator. And then I just fell into journalism because a friend of mine, Lucy, was having a party and a friend of hers was having a party in a pub in Fleet Street. And she asked if I wanted to go along. And I went along and I got chatting to some blokes who worked for the Daily Mirror.
Cathy (21:58)
Okay.
Sarah (22:14)
And they were struggling because they just introduced Apple Max and PageMaker, desktop publishing, as it was known in those days. And they were all very baffled by it.
Cathy (22:25)
Mhm. DTP.
DTP. Do you remember that all the adverts for jobs is it must must have DTP.
Sarah (22:29)
they can write DTP. And
as luck would have it, I had done a DTP course. So there’s quite a well I sort of knew how to use a mouse, which was literally the extent of it. And so they said, come in, come in, come and help us. So there’s quite a well I went and did some shifts and then I just, that’s it. I just got my hooks into them and refused to leave and just kept doing more shifts and more
Cathy (22:39)
Okay.
Well,
obviously… It was very fortuitous because first of all the lady at Hobbes told you you’d never amount to anything. And secondly, ⁓ you can at least string a sentence together. So there’s quite a well you obviously found your metier, didn’t you?
Sarah (23:00)
No, she did.
Exactly. And I think, obviously,
I think my facility for languages, I am good at languages, makes you quite good at writing headlines It’s funny. It’s an odd I’ve got a good ear for a headline. You know what mean? It’s almost a musical thing a little bit. And I used to love doing all of that. And
I fell in love with the whole process of newspapers, which doesn’t really exist like that anymore because of computerization. But in those days, there was still the compositors and the sub editors and the copy was still phoned in and everything was just, there was a craft to it. And a sort of, yes, exactly. And also, ⁓
Cathy (23:42)
and a chaos as well of its own, because you had to get it done by a certain time every night to get it in for the princess.
Sarah (23:49)
Exactly. And also it was a quite a tough environment and a very unforgiving environment. And of course, I’d grown up in a very tough and unforgiving environment. So there’s quite a well I wasn’t scared of any of this stuff. sort of water off a duck’s back. Whereas a lot of the people my age were a bit kind of, oh, this is all a bit, know. So there’s quite a well I just plowed on and I loved it. And I was very lucky because I learned so much from the people who had been doing this as a craft for a very long time.
And it was a real love affair. It was romantic almost, my obsession with it. I really loved it and I wouldn’t, didn’t want to do anything else. I realized that that was the only world I wanted to be in. And of course, the other thing about journalism is that it is full of really fun, clever people, know, quite naughty fun people. And so,
Cathy (24:34)
Yes.
you work with Andrew Pierce, don’t you, now? And he was actually my first podcast guest. I spoke to him about his book, Finding Margaret, yes, which was a really great read. But yeah, he definitely has a naughty streak a mile wide, doesn’t he?
Sarah (24:41)
Yes, doing a multi-final cab of people, yes.
I was hey
Yeah, great. Yeah, really good.
Yes,
and I think the thing about journalism is that it is the refuge of the outsider. So there’s quite a well everyone in journalism who’s good at it, if you look at someone like Piers Morgan or Andrew Pierce, they’re always a bit weird in that they don’t quite conform. They’re not brilliant at school, they’re not top of the class, they’re not the kind of grout that, but
They’re all a bit outsider-y. They don’t quite fit in. And journalism is brilliant if you don’t quite fit in because you’re always the outsider. If you’re going to be a good journalist, you always have to be the outsider. You can’t ever be captured by anybody. can’t say the things you need to say or do the things you need to do. So there’s quite a well no fear or favor, as they say. So there’s quite a well it’s a perfect job for someone like me who felt very…
Cathy (25:38)
Yes.
Sarah (25:44)
sort of lost really and I felt like this was my family, know, this kind of crazy collection of mad people. That was where I belong.
Cathy (25:51)
Do
So there’s quite a well, so actually, while you’re working in, in journalism, of course, you went on a ski holiday, you went on a fateful skiing holiday. And this is where you met Michael Gove,
Sarah (25:57)
Thank
⁓ yes. Yes.
Yes,
It’s that sort of sliding doors moment, isn’t it? Like if I hadn’t gone on a skiing holiday, I’d probably just be, you know, someone else.
Cathy (26:10)
Yes, exactly. Yes.
Well, exactly, yes. But you met Michael Gove, you were convinced that he was gay. In fact, you know, Michael’s sexuality is under constant question, where it’s obviously clear he’s just a metrosexual straight man. And people can’t seem to accept that.
Sarah (26:29)
Well, I wasn’t convinced that was gay. Everyone
kept telling me he was gay. So there’s quite a well I assumed that.
Cathy (26:34)
Okay, but
Sarah (26:38)
It didn’t seem…
Cathy (26:38)
he was living with two very
Sarah (26:40)
He was living with two very gay, very A-gays. And Michael is famously polite, which is an unusual characteristic in journalism. And also he smelt nice, which is also very unusual with those circles. So there’s quite a well I guess people concluded that because he smelt nice, because he was polite, that had to mean he was gay.
Cathy (27:03)
There were some very funny moments in your book about Dominic Cummings and the candles left in his room by the tactful people who couldn’t say, look mate, just go and have a shower.
Sarah (27:15)
I know, I know, scented candles.
Cathy (27:18)
Anyway, it was very funny. Okay, so you went on the skiing holiday and you and Michael subsequently got together and…
Sarah (27:20)
Yeah.
Yes, he was
very funny on the skiing holiday. And I think one of the things that makes me sad about Michael is that people don’t realize how funny he is. And that was what really made him stand out to me, because I like funny people. I think humor is the most important thing. Yes, very self-deprecating. ⁓ And I like that about him.
Cathy (27:40)
And he was self-deprecating as well. Self-deprecating too.
Sarah (27:49)
He took the piss out of himself and his total inability to ski and it just made me laugh. it made everybody laugh, but it made me laugh a lot. And then when we got back to London, we went for a drink at Claridge’s. And of course, that was our first date, which was crashed by Ed Vasey, who had somehow decided to set his cap at me too. But mainly because I think that he’s Michael’s best friend. And so anything that Michael does, Ed wants to do too in a kind of best friend competitive way.
So there’s quite a well Ed Vasey and Tom Baldwin turned up at our date in Claridge’s. So there’s quite a well quickly deteriorated. So there’s quite a well romantic. And then so we gave up on that. What, sorry?
Cathy (28:21)
How romantic!
cast of thousands. Yeah,
I was gonna say a cast of thousands at your first date maybe it was an early precursor of what was to come possibly. So there’s quite a well maybe you should have paid attention to the
Sarah (28:36)
Maybe I should have seen that as a red flag.
it was funny. And Michael was very apologetic. And then we went on our second date to the River Cafe and he was an hour and a half late. But I still didn’t get the hint.
Cathy (28:53)
But
you actually had in fact, Sarah, if you ever thought about writing another book, you could write one about how to have a good divorce because it’s very unusual for a couple to have emerged from what you have and still remain friends. And actually you and Michael have done magnificently on that. You’re, you you probably get on better now.
Sarah (29:02)
Yes.
Yes, I think we still,
we probably do get on better now. And I think it’s because we like each other fundamentally, but there was a lot of trauma there. And I think that we both reacted to the trauma in different ways. And I think that was the problem at the end, that’s what broke us apart, I just wanted to get out and run away and, do something different.
Whereas Michael just kept going back to the scene of, you know, he kept going back trying to fix it, trying to make things right, trying to repair things. And he just disengaged totally from me and the family in trying to do that. And you get to a point in your life where you think, well, I’ve probably only got about 25 good years left.
And, do I really want to spend it being sort of slightly at the bottom of someone’s list? And that was how I felt. we’d disconnected in a really fundamental way and I couldn’t find a way to reconnect. I suppose I’m a very pragmatic person. I think it’s better that
you are not together and so you take away all of the toxicity, all of the expectations, all of the bitterness potentially, all of the rancour and resentment. You take that out of the relationship and you can be friends. And it’s much nicer for your children because you can, like we went for my son’s 21st on Saturday night and that was lovely. I was there, Michael was there, all of Will’s friends were there. It was really nice evening.
no issues at all. And that is because I basically lance the boil. I think if we’d struggled on and we were really struggling, I think we would have ended up hating each other. And I think I do use my parents as a model for this because my parents struggled on. And my father had countless affairs and my mother had affairs too. And
Cathy (30:54)
Yes.
Sarah (31:15)
they are still together, but there are elements, I think, of them just slightly hating each other. And I think sometimes you have to accept defeat in life, you know, and do something that’s painful at the time, but long-term is, a healthier choice. So there’s quite a well that’s why we get on.
because we make the effort to get on and because we put the work in. And we do it partly because also the children themselves are quite traumatized by all the events. And so they need to be supported. there’s nothing worse than having two people arguing the kind of collateral damage that happens to the kids is just awful to see.
friends of my daughter who going through this at the moment. And the parents are so wrapped up in their own rage with each other that they can’t see that there are other people involved. I think you have to be grown up about these things. Michael will always be the father of my children and someone who I’m incredibly fond of. I just don’t really want to be married to him anymore. Quite glad someone else is having to do that.
Cathy (32:19)
Yeah, fair enough.
But you have a professional relationship as well, because you write for the spectator and you do events together. I would say that your book is a really good roadmap for anyone tempted to go into politics, because you just alluded to it now. The effect on your children was ghastly. think especially your daughter, who was,
Sarah (32:27)
Occasionally
Cathy (32:42)
at school at the time. And I cannot believe that that teachers would have a go at her simply because Michael Gove was her father. It’s so unforgivable. Actually, what he was doing was trying to improve standards in education. And even David Blunkett gave him some qualified approval for what he was doing. he was doing the difficult stuff but it just had such a terrible
Sarah (32:47)
They did. They did. Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah.
Cathy (33:05)
The backlash was awful.
Sarah (33:06)
Yes, think that, you know, children
are very sensitive at certain ages. I mean, I think children are generally very sensitive or certainly minor were. ⁓ But, know, the year that Beatrice started. No. No.
Cathy (33:16)
No more so than most. No more so than most. think your children
are normal kids who responded to an extraordinary situation. ⁓ And you know, most kids are just not exposed to
Sarah (33:24)
Yeah, yeah.
Yes, and I and you know, I have an enormous amount of respect for them for getting through and for being as functional as they are. They’re very different. But when Beatrice started secondary school she went to Greycoat, which is a very good state secondary school in Westminster, that was the year that Michael had decided to make the
the GCSE is harder. So there’s quite a well, you know, she was already in the playground, a target. And I think the other thing that people perhaps don’t realize if you’re a child is that if you turn up at school and you are son of, daughter of, et cetera, there are all sorts of preconceived ideas about you that exist. And people will think, you know, that person’s bound to be big headed, they’re bound to be full of themselves, they’re bound to be this, that and the other.
understood sort There’s a psychological concept which is called ego depletion. And it’s what happens to people like Britney Spears, celebrities, people who are in the spotlight, whether it’s negative or positive, it doesn’t really seem to matter. What it is is people thinking they know who you are and what you are. And the persona that they identify you as has no bearing on who you really are inside. It doesn’t match. you get this
contrast between the real you, the you that you are and the you that you think you are and the person that everybody else thinks you are. And if you’re a child and you don’t really know who you are it’s very difficult when you’re in a situation where everybody else is layering their own prejudices and their own preconceived ideas on you on the basis of your parent. And that’s really difficult to deal with. And I remember my son saying to me about two years ago,
Cathy (35:00)
extraordinary.
Sarah (35:06)
that when he first started secondary school at Harlem Park, for the first three years he would not go in the playground during break time or lunch time. He would go and sit with the teachers because he was Michael Gove’s son and he was just, again, a target on his back. So there’s quite a well he couldn’t really operate as a normal child. And it can lead to very, it can lead to quite difficult behaviors because what happens is, especially with children,
imagine you’re the child of Michael Gove and everyone thinks that you’re a sort of right wing Tory and you you eat babies for breakfast and all that kind of stuff and your parents are lizards, which is what, I mean, I remember my children telling me a story about how they were both told in the playground at primary school, everyone in the government was a lizard
Cathy (35:49)
A shape-shifting lizard, you mean?
Sarah (35:49)
Sorry, you disappeared there.
remember that story. So there’s quite a well they set their alarm for the middle of the night and they came downstairs to look at us while we were sleeping to check that we weren’t sleeping in our lizard form.
everybody thinks you are something and you don’t know who you are. So there’s quite a well you think, well, okay, well, I’m going to prove them wrong. And so what you do is you rebel and you behave badly and you do stupid things and that becomes difficult. you know, that’s why children of celebrities are always a bit screwed up or children of politicians are always screwed up. And I really wanted, I was very conscious of that process and I did not want it happening to my children.
Cathy (36:10)
Mm-hmm.
Well, of course.
Mm-hmm.
Sarah (36:30)
And that was another reason why I pulled the plug, because I needed to get them away from that world.
Cathy (36:35)
Yeah, absolutely. So there’s quite a well Michael’s involvement in politics, obviously are various people who coast in politics and then there are people who get things done. And obviously Michael was in the latter category. And unfortunately, when you do shake the system up, as he did, there is a backlash and you describe that quite well in the book, very well in fact.
And obviously you were taken into the Cameron’s inner circle and you became very close friends with Samantha and Michael was friends with Dave Cameron. as a result, it becomes very difficult and wasn’t the one of the first shakeups in the friendship was the expenses scandal.
Sarah (37:17)
scandal was the first real, I suppose, was the first punishment beating that we had in politics. I’d it that way. that expensive scandal was sort of 2008. So there’s quite a well Michael was elected in 2005 to Surrey Heath.
Cathy (37:32)
Yes.
Sarah (37:40)
The Tories managed to form a coalition government in 2010. So there’s quite a well was those years between him becoming an MP and then them going into government. So there’s quite a well he was in opposition working on his education plans.
so he became MP in 2005 and I just had Will and we decided that we would move to the constituency full time because the constituency very much wanted him to live there. And so we rented out our house in London.
Cathy (38:10)
Hmm.
Sarah (38:16)
initially while we moved down there and then when he was elected he had the house in London which is Little House as his London base and then I was there in the constituency all the time with the children and he was there too so that happened that was fine and then I became quite seriously depressed and ⁓ yeah yeah
Cathy (38:35)
Well, you were away from your friends, number one. You just had a baby. You had a toddler
to look after. And when you went back to work, you had a ghastly commute as well. So there’s quite a well it must have been. ⁓
Sarah (38:46)
Yeah, so I was… Yeah,
I just, I basically, I basically started to really malfunction. For the first time ever actually in my life, I really became very, very depressed.
it was definitely
postnatal depression. And I think it was, but it was, it was sort of exacerbated by circumstances as well. I mean, I suppose all postnatal depression is, but the doctor said, you need to go and see a psychiatrist. I went to see a psychiatrist. The psychiatrist said, you’ve got really bad postnatal depression. I would, if you weren’t who you were, who you are, I would probably have you sectioned, but I’m not going to do that.
What you need to do is to make your life a lot easier because your life is much too hard for you. You can’t work under, you can’t do what you’re doing. So there’s quite a well I was commuting to Wapping from Woking, which is the sort of impossible commute. it was two hours each way really, and then a very quite intense day at work at the newspaper at the Times.
Cathy (39:43)
Yes.
Sarah (39:47)
and then back and then straight into childcare. And then Michael was just never there because he was always in parliament.
Cathy (39:52)
but it seems extraordinary now in this day and age of working from home that you actually had to do that. But everybody did it at the time without thinking about it, didn’t they? Yeah, that no one was working from home. Yeah. So there’s quite a well.
Sarah (39:59)
Everybody had to do them. Yeah, yeah. No, there was no working from home. No, there was no working from home.
So there’s quite a well, we decided that we would move back to London and basically flip the arrangement Initially rent, then buy a place in the constituency as our second house.
So there’s quite a well to do all of this, you get allowances, you get second home allowances when you’re an MP because you can’t run two homes on a normal salary. So there’s quite a well we changed the designation. And when the expenses scandal broke, the fact that we’d done that was used against us to say that we had flipped our homes in order to get more money out of the system, which wasn’t the case at all because in fact, it cost us more
because we’d had to move back and I said, just tell them that your wife’s gone mad and that you had to move back to London. And he refused to do that,
Cathy (40:50)
But just in the avoidance of doubt for anyone listening, he was completely exonerated once the investigation was over.
Sarah (40:55)
Yeah, yeah, he hadn’t made any… No, we
hadn’t done any… He hadn’t done anything wrong. He’s very, good about that sort of stuff. He hadn’t done anything wrong at all. But the Telegraph didn’t care about that. The editor of the Telegraph at time, a man called Will Lewis, who is now in America, Michael sent him all the information and everything, and he just published anyway because, you know, it was a good story.
Cathy (41:18)
Why let the truth get in the way of a good story?
Sarah (41:20)
And so Michael worked for the Times, so there
was that sort rivalry, do know what I mean? Yeah, and anyway, it took eight months for all of the processes to go through the sort of mill, but they came back and they said, you absolutely did nothing wrong, there’s no issue, you don’t owe us any money. But we did pay back a whole chunk of money, which at the time we didn’t have. I suppose just because Michael was just…
so upset about it. And it really upset him because it sort of went to the core of who he is, which is that he’s a very, correct person in that. Yes, vulnerable. And it really rocked his sense of self. And, you know,
Cathy (41:53)
Honorable is that yes. Yes
Sarah (42:01)
upset me hugely because it was my fault that it had happened because if I’d been able to be a good political wife and manage in the situation that we were initially in then none of that would have happened and so I felt terrible because it was my fault really that he’d ended up in this situation and it was just it was just awful on so many different levels and
I remember we were coming back from, we used to go a lot to Colinsay, which is an island in Scotland for little family holidays. It’s very beautiful if you ever get a chance. And I remember him coming back from Colinsay one trip to Scotland and he was really, on the edge. And I remember him saying, you know, when we got back to London, you know, I did at one point think about throwing myself off that boat. For him, it was a real…
And it was awful to watch actually, I felt terrible for him. I still do actually, and it was a great injustice. And in fact, it’s one of the reasons I left the Times because Will Lewis then went to work for the Times. And I just thought, I really just can’t work under the same, I can’t work with the same organization that’s employing you because you destroyed me. And you you destroyed my husband and you made our lives absolute misery for no reason.
Cathy (43:07)
Fair enough. Yeah, absolutely.
Sarah (43:16)
And I think also.
Cathy (43:17)
Well,
it didn’t serve the purpose of truth. That’s the problem. I mean, it’s fair enough to excoriate someone if what they’ve done is wrong and their bank writes, but it’s quite another to just for the sake of good copy to destroy someone.
Sarah (43:21)
No.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
And they never, and they never,
so, but also it taught me a lot about my own profession, and about the lengths that people will go to. So there’s quite a well was, was a really quite complicated and difficult set of, ⁓ darling, it’s my daughter. Sorry. Okay, sorry, she’s gone.
Cathy (43:49)
Tell her congratulations on her first. I read about that
the other day. Congratulations.
Sarah (43:53)
But yes,
But yes, so yes, that was that was very difficult. And going right back to the beginning, which is your question. It was the Cameron’s was surprisingly unsympathetic, actually, and
kind of kept themselves at slightly arm’s length. And I felt, I also felt quite bad about that.
Cathy (44:09)
Mm-hmm.
Yes, I’m sure. And then there was the second big upset was Michael’s demotion from his post at education secretary. reading your book, the way you describe it is that if David had said to him, look, I’m really sorry, you’re doing a great job, but you know, you’re the most, he was so unpopular at the time because of the getting stuff done angle.
you the reforms that he was introducing were really needed and no one’s really
Sarah (44:38)
Yes, but they were tough.
mean, anything like that is going to hurt some people, you know. You can’t get anything done in politics. you know, Michael, he was doing the reforms that David wanted him to do, and David should have had his back. And instead of which, he didn’t. He just threw him to the walls. And I just thought, that’s just a really shitty thing to do.
Cathy (44:42)
Yes.
Exactly.
Yes, yes. mean,
it is, but there is an element of real politic there, isn’t there? But if David had been more, had been straighter with him about it, I suppose that could have. But this then leads to the whole Brexit thing, and in fact, there’s a line in your book which I thought was so illuminating, which was when
things were getting really tense during the referendum. David Cameron had a go at you, as if it’s your fault, Sarah, you can’t control your husband, you’re a bad puppet master. He said he was fighting for his political life. And in fact, was that the last thing he ever said to you? But actually, the way you describe it is that Michael was fighting for his political beliefs, his principles.
Sarah (45:29)
It was my fault.
Yeah, difference.
Cathy (45:48)
And he had real, very tangible reasons for not wanting Britain to continue in the EU. And that was his father’s fishing business. He was adopted by a Scottish couple. And yeah, do you want to talk about that?
Sarah (46:01)
Yeah, absolutely.
He was adopted by Ernest and Christine,
and Ernest came from a fishing family, and he had a little fish processing business in Aberdeen, and that went under because of the EU fishing laws. So there’s quite a well, you know, very straightforward. And I think Michael saw a lot of people in his hometown in the same situation. And, you know, again, this is how these decisions affect ordinary people. You know, someone in Brussels, decides that
there’s going to be a fish quota and a load of people in Aberdeen lose their jobs. And, you know, I think that wasn’t right because the people in Brussels aren’t elected. So there’s quite a well why should they affect the people of Aberdeen? So there’s quite a well there were some really good fundamental principles and of course, everybody, you know, remainers.
Cathy (46:45)
Yes, we certainly do.
Sarah (46:54)
always gloss over that fact. and I think one of the reasons that the referendum went the way it went was because the people who were affected by these laws are not generally the people who tend to have much political agency in life. for the first time they felt, actually, you we get a chance now to have us have our say. And then of course, what happened was that they did. And then what happened was all the people who who normally run things made sure that it was a disaster.
Cathy (47:10)
Yes. And they took it.
Yes, and in fact, I completely agreed with your your diagnosis of David Cameron being a massive man baby at resigning when he did, because I often think it’s such a pity that if he and George Osborne had said during the referendum whatever happens, we will
take the country forward and even if they subsequently resigned, they should have overseen that process. They had a fundamental duty to do it as they were the ones who caught the referendum in the first place.
Sarah (47:48)
Yeah
They instigated, they instigated,
well actually to be fair to George, he never wanted this referendum. It was Dave who wanted it. So there’s quite a well, but nonetheless, they instigated it. He’d had a success in Scotland in 2015 and he thought that, this will knock the whole, Euro-skeptic thing out. George wasn’t so convinced.
Cathy (48:03)
Yes, but
Sarah (48:15)
And, you know, but he set it up and he set the parameters as well and he didn’t put any fail saves in. So there’s quite a well he could have said, we’ll do the referendum, but we need a majority of 10 % either side for it to be valid, which would have been, I think, a sensible thing to do because it was a really important decision and, you need a majority and a proper majority. And…
Instead of which he just went ahead and did it. And then I remember saying to George a couple of weeks before the actual referendum, you must make sure that if this doesn’t go your way, I mean, at the time I thought it definitely would that you guys stay in post and that you oversee an orderly transition. And George said, well, you know, that can’t possibly happen if Dave loses, he has to go. And I said, I don’t understand why. I mean, because why? No.
Cathy (49:00)
No, there was no reason for him to go and in fact,
was a dereliction of duty for him to go. I think that he should have stayed, even if it was just short term, even if it was just for a couple of weeks, a month, who cares? The point is he should have put in the right people and perhaps then…
Sarah (49:10)
Yeah
Yeah. And instead, very easily,
look, you know, this didn’t go the way I thought it was going to go. It didn’t go the way I wanted to go. But I am the prime minister and it’s my duty to make sure that the country remains stable And I’m going to ensure a stable, orderly transition. And I’m going to appoint the people. You know, one of the reasons that Michael and Boris imploded so badly was because they hadn’t actually decided
who would be running which aspects of the process because their assumption was that Dave would be making the appointments. So there’s quite a well that Dave would be saying, well, Boris, you do this and Michael, do that, blah, blah. And that didn’t happen. And so there was this awful sort of scramble for power. But I think it was deliberate. I think it was deliberate. I think it was, I can’t have it my way, so I’m going to set fire to it.
Cathy (49:53)
Exactly.
Sarah (50:11)
That’s it. And it was literally that. was, it was well, you know, I’m just going to make sure this thing doesn’t work. You know.
Cathy (50:16)
There was definitely a sense of that.
There was definitely a sense of that. anyway, it’s obviously resulted in a lifelong schism between the Goves and the Camerons and you and obviously…
Sarah (50:29)
Well, I think Michael and Dave
get on quite well now because they’re politicians, pragmatists, whatever, but I don’t really see any of those people anymore because I’m just not very good at glossing over things that I find irritating.
Cathy (50:41)
Fair enough. And also, you’ve got perfectly good friends who accept you with the beliefs that you have and accept that you have to work for a living and don’t regard you as a mouthpiece for a party. I think one of the things that was very clear while reading the book is it shocked you that the relationship was probably much more transactional than you had ever imagined. And I think
Sarah (50:52)
Exactly. Yeah.
Yes, and
I think that was my own naivety. I assumed that, yes, I didn’t think it was transactional and I think it probably was quite transactional, to be honest.
Cathy (51:15)
Well, and that pain comes through because losing a friend is horrible, especially one that’s dear to you. But in your defense, you don’t say a single bad word about Samantha Cameron and you don’t say anything bad about Michael. And yet you managed to tell your story truthfully without glossing over anything, it was one of the most fun memoirs I’ve ever read simply because it was so honest and authentic.
Sarah (51:37)
Kids.
Cathy (51:40)
and I really got a great sense of you as a person, which is all you read memoir for. I think there plenty of people. In fact, I was reading the review of Kate Fall’s, I think the FT review, and they said she’s too nice and too polite to be a good memoirist.
Sarah (52:00)
Yes,
but also I think there’s a lot of people who write memoirs aren’t actually writers. I’m a writer, so it’s easy for me to write in a way that is nuanced.
Cathy (52:12)
I know you have to go now and I just wanted to wrap up by saying that in your columns, women are very grateful to you for writing honestly about very personal things that affect you. For example, you know, your struggles with with weight, with, hair loss, which must have been really distressing, especially when you’re in the public eye.
Sarah (52:14)
wait.
Yeah.
Cathy (52:33)
And,
and I think that is the real gift of being a columnist is if you can make people feel heard and seen and understood. so, ⁓ anyway, so anyone listening.
Sarah (52:44)
Well, it’s about making, it’s
about trying to make the personal universal because we all have similar experiences, And in life, I think it’s quite nice to feel that we’re all experiencing the same thing. And I think when you’re a columnist, that’s what you’re trying to do. You’re trying to make the personal universal. You’re trying to say, this is what I went through, but also try and make it relevant for the reader as well so that it’s not just about you, that it’s also…
Cathy (53:03)
Mm-hmm.
Sarah (53:10)
about them even if it’s just in a tangential way, but just that you try and frame it in a way that they can identify with it as well. That’s what you’re trying to do as a columnist. You’re not just imposing your experience on people. You’re trying to have a conversation with them. And that’s what I try to do. And that’s why I talk about things like hair loss and weight loss and all that kind of stuff, because I think they’re very real issues for people.
Cathy (53:19)
Yes.
Exactly.
Yes, they are. actually, to the Simon Heffers of this world, this is why Sarah’s book was so much fun to read, because you are very honest and you talk about all these things and you didn’t gloss over anything. that’s why it was, you know, not only did I read it, I listened to it as well. And it was great. So there’s quite a well. Thank you, Sue. Yes, you too. You too.
Sarah (53:55)
Thank you. It’s been lovely talking to you. What about the chaos?
Cathy (54:00)
Chaos R Us, I live in a very chaotic household for different reasons to the ones that you described.
I just really enjoyed chatting to you. Thank you so much. All