Magic mornings – Living with Great Uncle Michael Foot

Published: 4 March 2010

IT will be a terrible thing waking up in a world where there’s no Michael Foot.

Especially, as mornings in his Hampstead home were so uplifting.

I will miss the songs and poems he trumpeted while descending the stairs to breakfast every day.

“I wake up in the morning when the clock strikes EIGHT! – always ­punctual. Never, never late!”
Or, if it was sunny, Sonnet 33 by William Shakespeare: “Full many a glorious morning have I seen, flatter the mountain tops with sovereign eye, kissing with golden face the meadows green, bathing pale streams in heavenly alchemy.” He was the greatest alarm clock imaginable.

So many people I have spoken to today have their own personal story about Michael. Many remember him walking his dog Dizzy on the Heath, or marching for CND.

The undertaker this morning recalled taking Michael to Parliament on dozens of occasions, as a former driver of the 24 bus he used to catch to work like me from South End Green.

My memories of Great Uncle Michael have little to do with the Labour Party, his campaigning ­journalism or sharp-witted oratory.

As a child, I remember his thick-rimmed specs, flailing arms and house built out of books. I am writing this from his library, deepset in political pamphlets, framed cartoons, news­paper cuttings, the works of our greatest writers and some more obscure volumes I cannot imagine anyone has read. I have wonderful photos of him teaching me chess, and playing cricket on the beaches in Cornwall.

In my school years, he would package me off from his home with great works of literature – Shakespeare, Montaigne, Hazlitt, Wordsworth – all signed with curious messages of encouragement. He was both kind and supportive.

After university, I remember telling him I was thinking of trying to find some work experience on a news­paper. He advised me to ring the ­Camden New Journal.

I will never forget the answer machine messages he left, in that unmistakable voice, after I notched my first few by-lines on some truly forgettable early stories.

“Ah ha,” he would begin, “can you put me in touch with the famous Tom Foot, whose articles I am reading all over the place? Please. Let me know. Ah ha. Right!” And then the receiver would smash down.

Those messages have continued every week ever since.

It has been my great privilege to get to know Michael closely in his last years. The time I have shared with him in his home in Hampstead has been full of wonder, happiness and love. I’ll never forget him for that.
TOM FOOT

• The Foot family would like to thank all those who have sent messages of sympathy