A couple or three points

On the Horse Trials on telly this afternoon (I was, ah, following the cricket via Teletext) there was a rider going by the name of William Fox-Pitt. I could scarcely have been more impressed had he sported the surname Gladstone-Disraeli. Fox-Pitt? I could only wonder whether it was purely a coincidence, or whether the families of the two opposing political leaders of two hundred years ago had indeed been united in marriage, perhaps precisely for the purpose of avoiding future conflict. Just as royal dynasties have done, throughout recorded history.

I suppose we could look forward to Blair-Howard, with the future coupling of Euan and Larissa or some other combination of the various progeny involved. Not that there'd be any point in it, the difficulty nowadays not being in uniting the political rivals but in telling them apart. Previous generations had marriages of convenience. We do the same job with focus groups and triangulation.