Cut and thrust

Alumnus to be proud of No 87 is that great patron of the shipbuilding industry Michael Portillo, whose recognition of the job and trade-creating possibilities of state expenditure came in the same week as his scheme to ensure that, whatever else the youth of the nation may lack, they will know how to use a gun. Mr Portillo's impeccable political judgement can doubtless be credited to his time reading history at Peterhouse College, Cambridge, where tutor Maurice Cowling described him as "writing with a pickaxe".