Cathedral Club with Dr Bassett

I mentioned a few weeks ago I was about to attend a meeting of the Cathedral Club, which meets every so often with a guest speaker over dinner at the Auckland Club.

We were privileged to have Dr Michael Bassett talk to us, and it was one of the best dinners I have been to – it lasted around six hours. Dr Bassett is one of those fascinating people you could never get bored talking to. He is a historian so you could talk about Prime Ministers from 80 years ago. He has served on the Waitangi Tribunal so has some unique perspectives about Treaty issues and he was also a member of the Fourth Labour Government and could talk about everything from Roger Douglas to the early partnership of Clark and Anderton, and why they split up etc.

Now it was all Chatham House rules so I can’t talk in detail about the conversation, but for someone like me interested in both politics and history it was superb. And each guest speaker gets asked to nominate who we should invite next, so the club never run out of guests.

Apart from the quality of the guest, the food and drink was also excellent. With pre-dinner drinks, some whiskey, wine over dinner and finally some ports it was a well lubricated night.