Cook's ex-wife: I regret the book

ROBIN COOK'S former wife says she did a "dreadful thing" in writing her memoirs about their life together and if she met him she would say "sorry".

Margaret Cook, while saying there is "no point in regretting things you do under that sort of drive", tells Woman's Own today: "It's a dreadful thing to have done. There's part of me that says perhaps nobody deserves that - to have so much revealed about you, so much that's private and intimate.

"But there's no point in regretting things you do under that sort of drive ... if I was to regret it at all, it would have been these past few weeks."

Asked if she and the Foreign Secretary could ever be friends, she says: "I rather suspect we can, actually. I've exorcised all my ghosts.

"I don't think he could quite react to me in that way at this moment in time. I suspect he feels really quite angry. But time's a great healer."

In her book, A Slight and Delicate Creature, Mrs Cook told of her former husband's affairs, drinking bouts and how he rejected her when told by party bosses that he must choose between his wife and mistress.