Alan Watkins

Alan Rhun Watkins (3 April 1933 – 8 May 2010) was for over 50 years a British political columnist in various London-based magazines and newspapers. He also wrote about wine and rugby.

Life and career

Born in Tycroes, Carmarthenshire, with parents who were teachers, he was educated at Tycroes Primary School and Amman Valley Grammar School before studying law at Queens' College, Cambridge. After National Service he was called to the Bar.

Much of his long career as a commentator on politics was spent at The Observer newspaper (1976–93), but he also wrote for The Sunday Express (1959–64),The Spectator (1964–67), the New Statesman (1967–76), the Sunday Mirror, and the London Evening Standard.

He was noted for coining the political phrase "the men in grey suits", indicating a delegation of senior party figures who come to tell a party leader that it is time to go. But as he wrote in a footnote in A Conservative Coup:

His style might best be described as that of a political raconteur, gently reminding readers that, "What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun."