Hobson's choice Datrick Ser g eant's first words to me were: 'I
say, this bottle of Bollinger is pretty well empty, hadn't we better have another?' Here, I thought, was a man I could work with. His has always been the grand style, and his knighthood, in the Birth- day List, will sit well with it. He is the first city editor to be so honoured since his mentor Oscar Hobson, who so influenced R. A. Butler in the great post-war shift away from economic controls and towards open markets. Patrick, in turn, has been beyond doubt the most influential city editor of his day — and a long day, at that. He spread that influence beyond City jour- nalism's home patch, to a wide new reader- ship with savings (if not shares) of its own. His message was not only that money and markets mattered, but that they were fascinating, and could make marvellous reading. That wider understanding has been a public service, now publicly marked, and the secret was style. And now, Sir Patrick, I say, this bottle....
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