From today’s Indy:
Gordon Brown has likened himself to Heathcliff, the brooding, intense character in Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights. The Prime Minister is normally at pains to avoid being compared with other figures but his guard dropped in an interview with New Statesman, published today, in which the interviewer, Gloria De Piero, suggested to Mr Brown that many women viewed him as a Heathcliff-like figure.
Given that the character is famed for his vindictive side, the Prime Minister might have been expected to recoil in horror at such a comparison. But no. “Absolutely correct,” he replied, before adding: “Well, maybe an older Heathcliff, a wiser Heathcliff.”
It’s not perhaps the most flattering of comparisons (perhaps Gordon hasn’t read the book). But it does beg the question, open to LDV readers to answer, with which literary character would you compare the Lib Dem or Tory leaders…?
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12 Comments
I can’t help thinking of David Cameron as Bertie Wooster.
Obviously both Edgar Linton.
Camoron- Bernard Marx
Clegg- Helmholtz Watson
(Both in Brave New World, by everyone’s friend Aldous Huxley. Discuss).
I think it was Ann Leslie who compared Blair to Tigger and Brown to Eeyore….
Can I be Kate Bush?
Clegg has an air of William Boot, from Evelyn Waugh’s ‘Scoop’ about him, with the party establishment as a kind of Boot Magna.
Cameron has surely got to be Dorian Gray, though..
I’m sure if he was a little younger Clegg could be seen as Mr. Darcy.
How about Paddy Ashdown as James Bond or Boris Johnson as Mr. Toad?
As Heathcliff comes from gypsy/traveller stock perhaps that means he would have more of an incentive to sort out the gypsy issue?
Like the comparison of Davie C to old Bertie Wooster (it’s clear who Aunt Agatha would be – but not sure about Jeeves).
However, I only recently read Frankenstein, which was somewhat spoiled when the image of the leader of the opposition stuck in my mind as the lead – running around feverishly robbing graves for mis-shaped, decaying old policies and giving them a good dose of PR to give them animation.
And while I’m on gothic horror – how about Vince Cable for Van Helsing – the similarities are far too numerable to list.
If Cameron is Bertie Wooster, then John Prescott is the Empress of Blandings and Iain Duncan Smith is Roderick Spode.
Cameron is definitely Patrick Bateman
Cameron is clearly Dorian Gray.