Captain Moonlight: White and wrong

AN ARRESTING sight caught my eye in the Central Lobby at the Palace of Westminster on Thursday. There was the full figure of Nicholas Soames, the food minister, junior only in official status. What struck me, though, was that he was wearing white socks with his suit. I was horrified, and so was Douglas Sutherland, author of The English Gentleman and an authority on these matters: 'If a chap wants to be turned out, he doesn't wear white socks with a suit. We had a vicar who used to wear them under his cassock but that was because he was going straight off to golf and, anyway, you couldn't see them. Tell Mr Soames that he's rather a nice chap, but he really shouldn't wear them.' Nicholas Coleridge, managing director of Conde Nast, publishers of Tatler, and a man who knows about these things, thought it was just a bit of pour epater le bourgeois, like talking with one's mouth full, another aristocratic penchant. I wondered if Soames's membership of White's had anything to do with it. Sutherland snorted. 'Lunching with white socks on is not on, even at White's'

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