Word: ashdown
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...Ashdown Manor served as a residence hall for an eclectic group of British university students: Sarah Tudor, a wistful teacher-in-training prone to occasional lapses in consciousness; Terry Worth, soon to be the bohemian film critic of his generation; Robert, one of Terry's closest friends; Gregory Dudden, a cold-hearted, egocentric medical student; and Veronica, the militant lesbian whose dreams of work in the theater always remained unfulfilled. Sarah had only recently broken up with Gregory when she met both Robert and Veronica. Veronica had quickly aroused in her a new passion, forcing Sarah to make it clear...
...Ashdown is no longer being used by the university. Dr. G.K. Dudden--as Gregory is now known--has instead acquired the hall and converted it into a clinic for the study of sleep disorders. Having never met Terry during their college days, Dudden doesn't find it at all odd that the now well-respected film critic has agreed to visit the clinic after sitting through a 10-day film marathon without falling asleep once. In fact, it is Dudden's distantly-familiar female colleague, Dr. Madison, who makes the connection that both men once lived in Ashdown, the first...
...while questions of Kinnock's judgement stemmed form past political blunders, Clinton's come from largely unsubstantiated allegations about improper personal behavior. (The British aren't as puritan as we are. When it came out last month that Paddy Ashdown, the liberal Democratic leader, had committed adultery, his popularity ratings actually swelled...
...great deal more than the 22 seats they now have in the 650-seat House. If called to form a coalition Cabinet, however, they are prepared to exact a price: political autonomy for Scotland and Wales and a Parliament elected by proportional representation, the latter promising to give Ashdown's faithful greater clout. Since a proportional system would rob the major parties of strength, neither Major nor Kinnock favors it, though Labour has bowed to the idea of autonomy for Wales and restive Scotland. If a hung Parliament emerges, a Labour-Liberal Democrat match is the more likely partnership...
Strangely, Ashdown's personal appeal increased only after a newspaper's February expose of his brief affair with a former secretary five years ago. Unlike Bill Clinton's alleged amour in the U.S., the Ashdown affair left voters sympathizing with the party leader they had not known well before. Even so, whoever comes up with a Commons majority after next week, the bold leadership Britain knew during the 1980s stands to shade into a more uncertain thing. Tories and Labour are groping for new directions. Ashdown commands the middle of the road, but he may get trampled under the stampede...