Over a recent dinner with Ann Widdecombe she was her usual self: forthright, intelligent, politically unbending but also fun and kind.
Our conversation ranged over many topics, mostly politics and how she thought Reform UK was performing. She was a loyalist although concerned, as many of the party’s core voters are, that Nigel Farage shouldn’t bring over too many Conservatives. She no longer saw herself as a Tory, having been part of the Brexit Party before it became Reform.
But it wasn’t the politics that sticks with me; it was her attitude to her beloved Dartmoor that I remember after learning of the horrific manner of her death. She was found by her carer on Thursday morning with “serious injuries”, as the police launched a murder inquiry.
She lived in a cottage on the edge of Haytor, a gateway village to walks on the moors. She said it has everything she needed: one pub and a postbox.
I asked her how it felt to live in such a quiet area. She insisted she cherished the peace and the question of safety had never occurred to her. She liked the quiet and her friends were in London when she needed conversation. She loved how her regular appearances on Jeremy Vine’s show gave her a reason to be in the capital and kept her on TV and her mind active.
