Weekly Update 15/06/2010
Posted by Jacob Rees-Mogg, MP for North East Somerset, at 15:53, Thu 1 July 2010:
It was my intention to write this week about making a maiden speech in the House of Commons. However, the next day a more exciting event happened which was the birth of my third child and second son.
Watching the arrival of a new life is the most incredible experience. It is a miracle repeated every minute of every day somewhere in the world but nonetheless miraculous for its frequency.
Our son will be christened Thomas Wentworth Somerset Dunstan. Thomas is my brother’s name and also that of my maternal grandfather and he is named partly after them. On my wife’s side, Thomas Wentworth is her most distinguished ancestor, effectively the Prime Minister to Charles I. Like his master he was beheaded, which I am glad to say is less of a risk in modern politics.
Somerset was the name of my wife’s father, Somerset de Chair, a politician and author Even my devotion to the county would not have stretched that far (although one friend suggested I ought to call the child B&NES).
Dunstan is a great Somerset saint, who was said to have held the Devil by the nose using red hot tongs. As Abbot of Glastonbury, he rebuilt the abbey and adopted the rule of Saint Benedict before becoming a highly political Archbishop of Canterbury. He officiated at the Coronation of King Edgar in Bath in 973, which is a reminder of Somerset’s centrality in the founding of England.
I will return to more political writing next week and hope readers will forgive the personal tone of this column.
If you are subscribed to HearFromYourMP in this constituency,
log in to post a reply.
Otherwise, if you live in the UK,
sign up in order to
HearFromYourMP.