Paddy Ashdown: 'I'm sad that I lost my Northern Irish accent because I lost my identity and a bit of my blood'

http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2014/jun/07/paddy-ashdown-this-much-i-know

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I was only called Paddy when I came to boarding school in England. But I felt it suited me more than Jeremy.

My father liked to say he was involved in all the great retreats of the war and had a son after each one. I should really be called Jeremy Dunkirk Ashdown, conceived, I think, on overnight leave in a Folkestone hotel.

My wife, Jane, has a phrase, these days: "Paddy, please no more adventures." She describes this part of her life as me pretending to be retired and her pretending to believe me.

Fear of failure is what keeps me awake. In my early years as Liberal Democrat leader I was plagued by the thought that what had started with Gladstone would end with Ashdown.

My idea of being a liberal means never being afraid to be in a minority in order to stand up for what you believe.

I like that phrase of Lord Melbourne: "It is more important to support your friends when they are wrong than when they are right."

My mother was the one we children went to when we were broken in body or spirit. She was very calm amid a lot of chaos.

We have had one great idea on this continent in the last 70 years – that we are stronger working together. It is terrifying that people are stumbling back to isolationism.

It is never comfortable to be on the front page of a tabloid as I was. But you make your mistakes in life and you pay your price and you try to move on.

I am really sad I lost my Northern Irish accent because I lost my identity and a bit of my blood.

Northern Ireland drummed churches out of me. I do pray at night, but I don't know to what.

I have an instinctive, deep suspicion of all politicians – and generals – who bring up God.

It's hubris that always gets you in the end. It did for Tony Blair. It's the worm in the blood of Nigel Farage now, I think.

Politicians have left a massive vacuum where creed and principle and the battle of ideas used to be. We shouldn't be surprised if the press end up filling that space with pettiness and gossip.

I used to believe that evil would be visible in a person's face. Meeting Radovan Karadžic disabused me of that.

The best time in politics is before you are elected. In the eight years fighting to become an MP I had no money and two periods of unemployment, but everything was clear and black and white. Then I got elected and nothing was ever simple again.

Retirement is for the birds. I think death is preferable.

The Cruel Victory by Paddy Ashdown (William Collins, £25) is out now