Minister’s use of garlic is by no means cause for a witch-hunt

WE WON’T start with the garlic.

Let’s take an oblique route to David McWilliams’ astonishing revelations about Brian Lenihan’s visit to the McWilliams’ home. Let’s go via Lynn Barber’s memoir, An Education. This is the one containing an account of Barber, at 16, having an affair with a much older guy who turned out to be a conman. It’s also the one that announces Barber slept with 50 men in a couple of years, apparently on the theory it was better to find out whether a man was good in bed before you wasted time getting to know him.

In due course, Barber married a good man and stayed married to him until his death did them part. In the middle of her narrative of their life together, she mentions a dinner party at which one of the guests overturns and breaks a vase. Not to worry, Barber says. Always hated that vase anyway. At which point another guest huffily points out that the vase had been a gift from her to Barber. Lynn Barber may in fact have loved the vase before it was smashed. But she did what most people do. She said whatever she figured would make the other person – in this case the vase-smasher – feel better.