Alexander Chancellor 'in a world of nonsense' after brain haemorrhage

Alexander Chancellor (photo), recovering from a recent brain haemorrhage, discovered that when you suffer from the illness you live in a world of nonsense like Alice in Wonderland.

“Even the newspapers appear rubbish,” he writes in The Spectator, the British weekly he once edited.

“Who, for example, could believe that Obama owed his enthusiasm for the EU to his Kenyan ancestry, or that Hitler wanted a European federation as a way to stop European wars?”

Chancellor, 76, now editor of The Oldie magazine, was economic affairs editor when he left Reuters after ten years in 1974. His father, Sir Christopher Chancellor, was Reuters general manager until he resigned in 1959.

Chancellor junior was at his Tuscan home in Siena last month when his mind suddenly went “wonky” and everything began to go wrong. He was driven to the hospital at the medieval city of Siena where he was rushed through A&E, tested, scanned and the leak of blood from his brain was discovered.

His experience of the modern Italian teaching hospital was exemplary, he writes, and thanks to its care he seems to be slowly getting better and able to write his Spectator column.

“I may be pottier than I realise, however, so please be indulgent. But one aspect of my condition is that, while you forget most things, you don’t forget any music. All tunes remained secure in the memory, so I will at least spend the rest of my life humming.” ■