He was as foreign to the morning-coated tradition of British diplomacy as a shire stallion between the shafts of a state coach. He had neither the training nor the heart for the prancing and posturing of a high-stepping hackney. Like the farmers' dray horses that hauled their loads through the cobbled streets of the Somerset village where he was born to bitter poverty in 1881, big, bluff, tough Ernie Bevin had spent his life with his shoulders hard against the traces, his eyes ahead and his back braced for the long pull.
Sixpence a Week. Ernie (not even at Whitehall would anyone...
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