Photo by Chatham House | CC BY 2.0
Tony Blair is clearly a piece of work. Incidentally, I’ve known about him for decades before he became well-known.
Blair went to Fettes, the Scottish equivalent of the elite English private school Eton (the former’s alumni include the composer Michael Tippett, the winner of the Nobel Prize in economics Angus Deaton, Churchill’s foreign secretary John Simon, the actress Tilda Swinton, the golfer Tommy Armour, the gay climber and child psychiatrist Menlove Edwards (who committed suicide after living a difficult personal life), and numerous legal figures and army generals). Blair was at Fettes from 1966 to 1971.
A good friend of mine during my undergrad days in the late 60s/early 70s had the misfortune (his term) to attend Fettes the same time as Blair.
My Old Fettesian undergraduate friend, like me a future university teacher, moved in very different circles from Blair at Fettes (admittedly my friend was a couple of years older), who at that point had seeming thespian aspirations and gloried in the nickname “Emma”.
My friend was unable to tell me how this nickname came to be bestowed on the future prime minister.
The outlines of Blair’s career after he left Fettes and went to Oxford are well known. His academic career at Oxford was just as undistinguished as his time at Fettes. His main claim to fame at Oxford was playing in a band that did covers of hits by the Rolling Stones.
At Oxford, we’ve just been told by…