Jeremy Thorpe was elected leader of the Liberal Party in 1967. In the decade which followed, he put North Devon, his constituency, on the map. I was born there and grew up "where Exmoor meets the sea", as travel guides like to describe my village and the area around it. Jeremy Thorpe was our local MP; impossible to ignore, not because of the trilby hat or his Edwardian suits - which, even in a place not known for being cutting edge, were regarded as old-fashioned - but because of his charisma.