Aitken: forgive me

Former politician, former prisoner Jonathan Aitken and his wife of one year Elizabeth Harris ( exspouse of Richard Harris, Rex Harrison and Aitken's own cousin, Peter Aitken) are in the process of moving house. When I arrive at their spacious apartment in South Kensington, there are all sorts of people bobbing hither and thither, and paintings strewn in corridors and boxes being filled with sumptuouslooking artefacts.

"I'm awfully sorry," says Aitken, ushering me into a halfempty room. "We're only going down the road to Kensington but it's a bit chaotic." He looks remarkably relaxed. He is wearing dark trousers, a big comfortable green fleece and black loafers.

He's not the most charming of people - his nature being rather perfunctory - but he's obviously making an effort. He asks me if I want a coffee and looks relieved when I say yes. It's almost as if someone, his wife maybe, has given him a mental list of Things To Do To Appear Courteous. It's a lesson, judging on how bewildered he looks about where I should sit and what to do with my coat, he's had to learn.

"Well, I used to be very impatient," he says. "Before I went to jail I thought impatience was a virtue. I had lots of other people to do things for me. Life was very chaotic. There were red boxes flying here and there and the children squabbling over my time when I really had none to give. I thought life was about achieving goals. I was very successful and then it all went wrong. Defeat, disgrace, divorce, shame, bankruptcy, loss of everything, perjury, jail. And then I learned, according to my Christian faith, that impatience is not a virtue. That was hard. I've learned a lot of lessons but that was one of the hardest."

So here we have the penitent Jonathan Aitken. He has served his time for lying on oath in the civil libel case against The Guardian and Granada TV. He has done his 18-month sentence (he served seven months). He has paid his debt to society and has now, supposedly, moved on. He has found his faith - for a couple of years, after leaving jail in 2000, he studied theology at Wycliffe College in Oxford - and he sits on the boards of many Christian charitable foundations.

For the past few years, in fact, despite writing his autobiography, Pride and Perjury, and his most recent book, Psalms For People Under Pressure, he has kept a pretty low profile. Until, that is, a week ago when it was reported that just over 200 Tory members in his old constituency of Thanet South wanted him to stand for selection as an MP again.

THEN, just as it seemed Aitken was about to stage an extraordinary comeback, writing in The Spectator about how humbled and thankful he was to have been approached, the powers that be at the Conservative Party pulled the rug from under his feet.

"It's all rather simple," says Aitken. "I'd rented Ian Fleming's old flat in Sandwich to finish my book on psalms and I met up with some people I used to know. It was the first time I'd been back there. I was very moved when people came up and shook my hand and slapped me on the back. Then people got together and decided they'd like me to stand."

All hell broke loose. Everyone had an opinion and the papers were full of "should he/shouldn't he?" type pieces. The upshot was that, at first, Conservative Central Office announced he'd missed the selection deadline by 12 hours. Then, a day or so later, Michael Howard quelled any hopes by saying, essentially, there was "no room" for Aitken in his parliamentary party.

All this has left Aitken pretty much back at square one. How does he feel about it? "Well, I was cross at first," he says, "because I certainly didn't miss the deadline. That was cock and bull. But I accept Michael's decisions. I have known him for a long time; he visited me in jail and I think, despite his personal feelings toward me, he had to make the decision he did. I do think, however, that it's a shame. Very few MPs have lived through what I have. My time in jail has meant I've seen so much more of all parts of society, from the way black communities work to the travails of travellers. I had a very friendly conversation with Michael. I accept everything but,

in my heart, I suppose I am disappointed." It's obvious that some do not believe that 61-yearold Aitken has repented. There are those who say he is beyond morality.

After all, this is a man who, during his time as a Cabinet minister in John Major's government, was sent to jail for lying about who paid his bill at the Ritz Hotel in Paris. He said his first wife, Lolicia paid the bill, but airline receipts proved she couldn't have been in Paris at the time. Faced with this, Aitken then pleaded guilty to perjury and admitted a Saudi businessman had paid instead, which contravened ministerial rules. His humiliation was made worse when it was proven that Aitken had asked his then wife to lie under oath and, on top of that, had also asked his daughter Victoria to do the same.

Why did he do this? "I feel ashamed about the whole thing," he says. "I was arrogant. I made the Sword of Truth speech about scything through the corruption in journalism and society and then, months later, I was sent down. I think about that speech now and cringe. I don't blame anybody but myself and I deserved my punishment."

It got even more complicated when costs were awarded

against him and he immediately claimed bankruptcy. Rumours have, ever since, ranged from whether or not he does or doesn't have millions stashed away from alleged arms deals to, at the time, the suggestion that he and his first wife were divorcing in order for her to squirrel his money away in Swiss bank accounts. "The idea," says Aitken, grimacing, "is that we were, apparently, going to get married again when I came out of jail and, hey presto, I'd get my money back."

ALL that was put paid to when he married Harris last year. "Lolicia and I were divorcing anyway," he says. "Believe me, no one wants to go bankrupt. I had to sell the house and turf my own children out of their home and leave them with no roof over their heads. The lawyers sold everything - my Rolex, my cufflinks. They found no money anywhere. By the time I'd paid my divorce settlement and my legal bills I only had two thousand pounds left in the world." (Although, of course, his new wife, after three divorces, is comfortably off.)

But there is, unbelievably, even more. During the trial, when he was, he says, "staring into the abyss", Petrina Khashoggi, daughter of Soraya Khashoggi and supposedly her former husband, Adnan, turned up claiming Aitken was her father. "I had slept with Soraya one last time just before my marriage although, for obvious reasons, I had not told Lolicia," he says. "Anyway, as soon as I saw Petrina with my daughters Alexandra and Victoria I knew she was mine. A DNA test confirmed what we already knew." The relationship between Petrina and her father has not been altogether simple. "I was going to jail when she'd just found out I was her father. She was, of course, welcomed into the family but I think both of us would say it's been a rocky ride."
His relationship with his other children seems to have taken a turn for the better. "There was a time when they found it hard to see me," he says. "What must I have been in their eyes? But we have all been reunited now. I think they prefer a vulnerable father to a powerful one." His son, William, is studying theology at Edinburgh Univeristy. Alexandra is an actress, and Victoria? "She's in America," he says. "I don't really understand what she's doing."

At the end of the day, Jonathan Aitken does seem to have made peace with himself. There are some things he will probably never really understand. As a man born into privilege - the great nephew of Lord Beaverbrook and son of Sir William Traven Aitken - he has never really had to battle for anything before. His mother, Penelope, is renowned for her fortitude. She apparently held his family together when he disgraced himself. When I ask him about his privileged background and how it went down in Belmarsh prison, Aitken bristles. "I don't really like that word," he says. "I didn't feel any different from any other of the inmates - it's just that I had a funny accent."

But he went to Eton and Oxford. He went straight into journalism, then banking, then politics. He has, let's face it, been ensconced in the bosom of power since birth. Has he found that his access to that type of society has changed? "I had difficulties when I came out," he says. "I couldn't get a bank account for a start! And I had no money. That's why, when I was at Wycliffe, I started writing as a way of making money. Even then I was only pulling in maybe a grand and a half a month, now maybe it's two. I don't make much money from writing a book on psalms!" It's not a bad income though, I say. "It's a pittance compared to what I earned before," he replies.

In a way he was, oddly, punished as a child. When he was very young and growing up in Ireland he was diagnosed with TB. It had spread rapidly to his lungs, back and hip bones. His mother was told he would not survive. The only chance he stood was to be completely immobile for three years strapped to a contraption that was a bit like an early iron lung. I tell him I find this almost unbelievable. "Oh, it was fine," he says happily. In the end his immobilised hours were spent chatting to Sister Mary Finbar, who came to raise the children's spirits.

"My life has totally changed," he says. "But I'm much happier now. I love my wife. When I first met her - even though, oddly enough, we'd lived together many years ago before she married my cousin - we didn't fall into each other's arms. It was very chaste for a long time. And I have my faith. People talk about it as if it is a crutch, but it isn't. Sometimes it is very hard to follow a moral path. I know that more than anyone."

But does he manage to follow that path? "You're asking me if I lie any more," he says. "All I can say is I do not seem to bear much resemblance to that man I was before. I look at what that person was and I can barely believe it. That person had no humility. I have these things now. I take time to contemplate my life and I think, I hope, I can be redeemed in the spiritual world and that I will be allowed redemption on the earthly one."

And yet, and yet ... I wonder if he really knows the meaning of the word shame. In our society, where a lawbreaker such as Major Charles Ingram can earn more money from being a cheat than a paid-up member of the armed forces, perhaps shame plays no part. But if Aitken accepts the fact, which he does, that a friend of his from jail who used to be a bank robber is hardly going to get a job with Barclays, then why should he expect to go back into politics?

"I don't expect that," he says. "I have accepted that it will never happen. That door has closed. But I do think our society should think about what redemption means. I have done my time. Mea culpa and all that. I would like my past to be expunged, really. In my case, sadly, that will never happen, will it?" No, I say, not in his lifetime. Probably not ever.

Psalms For People Under Pressure by Jonathan Aitken is published by Continuum, £7.99.