I was very sad to read of the death at 90 of Shirley Williams – Baroness Williams of Crosby. She had been an active member of the House of Lords until her retirement and I gather she rather regretted no longer being able to participate in proceedings.
Apart from her commitment to British politics, she also took an interest in American politics and variously figured in the quizzes in my course on the US presidency, given that she married Richard E. Neustadt, whose work Presidential Power was a staple of the course.
She was famously disorganised and one of the best stories about her, which may or may not be true, but which has a ring of truth about it, is an occasion when she was rushing to catch a train. As she approached the barrier, she began scrambling in her bag for her ticket. The ticket inspector on the gate recognised her and said ‘That’s all right Mrs Williams, we know who you are’. ‘Oh’, she replied, ‘I’m not trying to find it for you. I need to look at it to find out where I am supposed to be going’.