Fiona Woolf Letter: How It Changed over Seven Re-writes

By David Barrett
Telegraph
October 30, 2014

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/law-and-order/11199936/Fiona-Woolf-letter-how-it-changed-over-seven-re-writes.html

Fiona Woolf and Leon Brittan Photo: PA/Getty

A sequence of seven letters were published by the Commons’ home affairs select committee after being disclosed to the MPs by Fiona Woolf.

Through the initial drafts, a picture of her contact with Lord Brittan and his wife over a number of years was slowly built up and then, in the final version, detail was cut out and relationships appeared to be? more oblique.

By setting out that there were “no other guests who attended” the dinners at the Brittans’ home in November 2009 and February 2012, Mrs Woolf conveyed an image of an intimate soiree with friends.

It may be that Mrs Woolf simply mis-remembered the nature of those dinners.

But by saying in the final version of the letter that there were “at least four other guests”, the meals sound more formal and perhaps hint at the atmosphere of a business event.

The language surrounding Mrs Woolf and Lady Brittan’s contact with each other as magistrates is also subtly changed over the various drafts.

Initially, Mrs Woolf says they “may have sat on the same bench” but by the final version she is more forthright.

“I do not recall serving in the same court at the same time,” she writes, although she conceded that it may have happened on “a rare occasion”.

The first draft states Mrs Woolf and Lady Brittan met on “about two occasions for coffee” and the second draft elaborates: “My records show we met twice”.

By the final version, Mrs Woolf simply states: “I have met Lady Brittan on a small number of occasions for coffee from memory (as these dates are not always recorded in my diary).”