governor Lord Waddington, profiled by reporter John Sweeney. The Royal Gazette here reprints the article in full: The palms susurrated in the mid-ocean breeze as the voodoo men came on to shake their sticks at the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh. Their performance was a revival of the West African dances shipped to the island two centuries and more ago: a species of hokey-cokey, slave culture repackaged for the taste of elderly (white) American tourists and visiting royals. But the Gombeys' masks, rainbow bunting garters and peacock headdresses looked less odd than the ceremonial uniform worn by His Excellency The Governor, Lord Waddington, when he greeted the Queen. He looked really silly.

In a gilded uniform straight out of C.S. Forester's "Death To The French'' -- spurs on the boots, cocked hat and swan plumes -- David Waddington is the last surviving heir to the voodoo tradition of the British Empire, of hangings and cricket, gunboats and arcane justice, by which we once ruled over the lesser breeds. Sir Henry Newbolt could have written the poem "Vitai Lampada'' with Waddington, Margaret Thatcher's last Home Secretary, in mind: `There's a breathless hush in the Close tonight/Ten to make and the match to win/A bumping pitch and a blinding light/An hour to play and the last man in.' As time runs out on the millennium, Hong Kong is going to the dogs, Gibraltar is not far behind and the Falkands are but a slab of rock coated in sheep dung.

Bermuda, Britain's oldest colony, is now teetering towards independence. Not even the snake charm of monarchy -- itself a waning magic back home -- will stop the sun from setting on the Union Jack flying over Government House. But not without a fight from the last man in.

One brilliant-to-be-alive morning after the royals had flown, I strolled through the neurotically manicured lawns of Government House to the whistle and whoop of exotic birdsong, the Atlantic sparkling below. An iridescent lizard scuttled by. It was like walking inside a Bounty ad. Waddington welcomed me into his airy, sunlit office. A figure shimmered in, went out and came back with tea.

In the flesh, Waddington proved to be a short, balding, white-haired 60-something. His accent is contrived Lancastrian posh, Hyacinth Bucket played by a man. He was strangely nervous, eager to be pleasant, unexpectedly nice.

We gossiped about Bermuda, about which he was defensive. "The papers do tend to look upon this as a joke island,'' he said gloomily. From his office window there is a fine view of the western end of the island he governs for the unjokey salary of around 70,000 a year, paid for by the Bermuda government. Was he enjoying himself? "Yes. Obviously there are times when you miss your family and you miss the children and you want to know what's going on at home. Gilly (his wife) gets anxious that the garden is getting overrun with weeds. You miss home, but the people here are incredibly nice. We have made a lot of nice friends. We try to engage ourselves. I try to play golf.'' It sounds as though he is making the best of it. But Bermuda is an analgesic paradise. Its propriety deadens. The eponymous shorts were created not as a larky fashion innovation, but to prevent the population from being driven wild by the sight of naked knees. The island boasts pasteurised lawns instead of countryside, an acne of golf courses and a religiously observed speed limit of 20 mph. The sea and the white beaches are achingly beautiful, the children polite, the micro-climate benign. The effect is to make Bermuda as life-enhancing as a Swiss bank by the sea. It is a contender -- and this is a personal view -- for the title of Most boring Place On Earth.

The island (actually it is a chain of islands linked by bridges) is only 22 miles long by one mile wide, the shape of a fishhook. The shipwreck of Sir George Somers's Sea Venture here in 1609 was the event that, some say, led Shakespeare to write The Tempest. It also led to the foundation of the colony.

The nearest land is Cape Hatteras, North Carolina, some 570 miles to the west.

Not surprisingly, the locals go crazy with a claustrophobia they call `rock fever'. What about Waddington? "If you're living in a tiny place like Bermuda you really do get an urge to get off the island fairly frequently. We've probably got off the island every three or four months and we're ready for it, ready for it by then.'' Bermuda profits from two unlovely sources of revenue: tax avoidance and the tourists. Smart money likes Bermuda's low tax regime and its relaxed financial regulations. For example: the Observer's Michael Gillard tried to turn up to the 1991 annual general meeting of Michael Ashcroft's Bermuda-registered ADT company. He was refused admission. After a long wait, Gillard was told: "You asked to see Mr. Ashcroft. He is no longer with us. He has left the building.

I do not know where he is. I am not at liberty to say any more.'' Next time you hear the phrase "shareholder democracy'' think of Bermuda.

The Yankee trippers love its ersatz Britishness: the black policemen in their bobbies' helmets, the red telephone boxes, the ol' fashioned courtesy. Bad form to point out that all three are hard to find in the Mother Country.

Bermuda is much more American than British: the Bermudian dollar is pegged, one for one, to the US dollar. The lion's share of tourists come from American. Island slang features such monstrosities as "Have a nice day'' and "Wednesday through Friday''. The telly in the hotel tells you all about the weather in Des Moines and the league position of the Poughkeepsie Patriots, but nothing about cricket. (Ergo it is not a proper British colony.) Bad form, too, to mention race. The mixed race greeting to the royals was out of character for Bermuda. A package tourist might not notice it, but up to 1968 the island had its own rigid apartheid, with all the top jobs and all the plum social events reserved for whites only. Today the majority of the population, some 60 percent of 60,000 people, is black but the legacy of the old regime is not hard to detect. Many of Bermuda's whites are the descendants of privateers and slave-owners who trafficked in humanity in the 17th century.

Bermuda's `old money' was invested in land, particularly the banks and shops along the main street, Front Street, to create fortunes for a small number of leading families.

The political and social changes since 1968 have opened up government jobs to blacks, but the economic reality is that whites own Bermuda and live off the interest and blacks drive the taxis, clean the floors and shake the cocktails.

In 1973 the then governor, Sir Richard Sharples, his aide-de-camp Captain Sayers and Horsa, his Great Dane, were shot dead. In 1977 two black men, having been found guilty in a controversial trial, were hanged for the murder and race riots erupted. Ever since, the British government and the Bermudian whites have followed a policy of clenched buttock politeness to the blacks. As the Queen underlined in an unusually frank speech: "Black people have taken the lead in many areas of national life -- politics, the judiciary and the police, to name but a few.'' There is a black premier -- Sir John Swan -- black chief of police, a black finance man, a black chief firefighter. But the man responsible for foreign affairs, defence and internal security is Lord High Everything Else, Governor Waddington, who, ahem, isn't black.

The whites, the money men and the British government don't want independence, but are uneasy about saying so in public. The blacks, not all, but probably a majority, want it soon. Trevor Woolridge is a black MP for the opposition Progressive Labour Party: "We have been wanting independence for 30 years.

Bermuda has a serious racial problem. Institutionalised racism is alive and well.'' Woolridge welcomed the Queen's visit, although "she clearly represents Bermuda's colonial status''. Premier Swan leads the right wing United Bermuda Party. He does not want to lose the income from the world's finance houses, which like the stability of a Crown Colony. But, conscious of independence as a vote-winner, he is more afraid of losing power. Hence his late conversion. Sitting in his office -- markedly less grand than the governor's -- he announced: "I've always been in favour of independence.'' At the end of the conversation his phone rang. He picked it up, only to find it was a wrong number.

As governor, Waddington has many jobs but none more prickly than squaring the contradictions between the two racial groups. His past record on race has been dogged with controversy. A decade ago, he was Mrs. Thatcher's minister for immigration. And though in October 1983 he roasted far-right Tory Harvey Proctor, who called for repatriation, and once said: "I don't approach my job feeling the more people I kick out the better,'' he did let in one white immigrant, South African distance runner Zola Budd, in 10 days, as opposed to the going rate for brown would-be Britons of 13 months. He also described the claims of 58 Tamils who sought asylum as "manifestly bogus'', only for them to strip to their underpants for photographers, an image which was celebrated in a Private Eye cover.

In Bermuda he has not lost his talent for unwittingly generating farce. A year ago he crowned the winner of the Miss Bermuda Isles competition, a white woman, to complaints that the charms of the island's black contestants had been overlooked. Beauty contest rows are always silly and this one became sillier when the Times reported that the governor made the presentation in full gubernatorial fancy dress. An invention: but the story was halfway round the world before the truth had got its slippers on.

Last December a photographer, who insisted his identity remain secret, claimed that a policeman had confiscated a picture he took of the governor's Daimler, which had broken down in the middle of the night. The police investigated and said the story was a fabrication. The photographer refused to stand up for his story in public. No one has ever succeeded in getting to the bottom of this puzzle. A few days later, a policeman was transferred from Government House after he daubed a religious slogan on the walls with "a plum-type fruit''.

While his old Cabinet colleague Chris "Fatty Pang'' Patten wrestles with the Chinese gerontocracy over the future of Hong Kong, Bermuda's governor only rates a few blips in the London gossip columns. For a man with the taste for serious power, the governor's job is more prune than plum. Why did Waddington get it? It was a consolatory sweetie lobbed by John Major, newly elected prime minister, who wanted him out of his Cabinet.

Waddington was very much a man of the old dispensation. He wept profusely when he told his beloved premier that she could not win the leadership battle. And he liked hanging and flogging, opinions too carnivorous for Major's blander vision.

Waddington was born into a mill-owning Lancashire family in 1929. He went to Sedbergh, then one of the more pointlessly sadistic public schools, and Hertford College, Oxford. He became a lawyer, enjoying a modest success but no great reputation on the northern circuit. He married Gilly, the daughter of Preston's then Tory MP, Alan Green. They have three sons and two daughters. He first went into the Commons in 1968, but lost his Nelson and Colne seat in 1974 to Labour's Doug Hoyle. "It was a bitter, partisan battle,'' remembers Hoyle. "A nasty contest.'' Waddington's speech conceding defeat was thought by many to have lacked grace. It was, he said, "a bad day for the country and a bad day for civilisation.'' Thrown out of Parliament, Waddington suffered a nervous breakdown. "There were two opinions,'' he told me. "One view was that I was suffering from encephalitis. Whatever it was, it was terrible.'' But he won through, getting selected for the thumpingly safe seat of Clitheroe in time to ride the Thatcher tidal wave in 1979. Mrs. Thatcher warmed to him. After the success -- in her eyes -- as immigration minister, she made him Chief Whip.

His Labour opposite numbers hated him, but Waddington rarely seemed perturbed.

In 1987 Labour's immigration spokesman, Alf Dubs, claimed: "It's a lousy job.

But he's got nowhere else to go. He's not good enough.'' One Labour MP said: "His predecessor looked embarrassed at having to behave like a sh*t in that job, but Waddington appears to have had no such qualms.'' In June 1988 Labour Chief Whip Derek Foster accused Waddington, amid mutual back-biting, of a "terrible breach of honour'' over parliamentary business. Waddington used to yell at the Labour front bench more than some of his laid back ministerial colleagues. His career rocketed when in 1989 Mrs. Thatcher appointed him Home Secretary in the wake of Nigel Lawson's sudden exit from the Cabinet. That year some Manchester University students spat at and punched him. He snapped back: "If I was a parent of any one of those children, I would put them across my knee and flog them.'' Stop, the anti-corporal punishment group, wrote to him ask what he meant by "flog''. He replied: "I am happy to make clear that by `flog' I meant `give them a good spanking'.' A year later, he won the heart of the Tory party conference when he proclaimed that they knew where he stood on hanging -- in favour. This opinion always seemed a strange one for Waddington to have held, because in July 1976 he played a major part in one of the trials most often cited by the anti-capital punishment lobby: that of Stefan Kiszko.

The Kiszko case continues to haunt the British system of justice and knocks for six our belief in the `fair play' of Vitai Lampada. Waddington had been Kiszko's defence silk. When I mentioned the K-word Bermuda's governor grimaced: "If I had been handed the forensic evidence which was available things would have taken a different course. But there it is.'' But there, in Leeds Crown Court, 1976, the forensic evidence wasn't. What happened was this. In October 1975 the body of 11-year-old Lesley Molseed was found on a Pennine moor and a murder hunt was on. The police had a vital clue: semen stains on her clothes. A forensic scientist found that the semen contained sperm-heads: the killer was fertile. But the sperm count was unusually low, in the bottom 25 percent of sperm density. The man arrested for the murder, Stefan Kiszko, a young civil servant, suffered from hypogonadism.

In layman's English, he had been all but a eunuch from birth. He could not produce male sex hormones and did not develop male sexual characteristics. His testicles and penis were small, his sexual drive limited. He was fat, had a waddling gait and looked odd. (He was not mentally sub-normal, however, and spoke English, German and Ukrainian.) Just before Christmas, 1975, Kiszko confessed to the murder under interrogation. However, the analysis of Kiszko's semen showed he had no sperm at all. Despite his confession, Kiszko could not have been the killer. But that sperm analysis went missing. It was not included in the report made by the scientist who collated the results of the forensic tests.

PLUM JOB: LORD WADDINGTON So the police and the prosecution never knew about the discrepancy. And neither did Waddington or the jury. One of Waddington's current jobs as governor is to consent to or commute the death sentence, which Bermuda still has on the statute books. If Britain had had the rope in 1976, I suggest to him, poor Kiszko would have hanged ... "Yes. But I can't allow myself today to be drawn into expressing an opinion on capital punishment simply because of my responsibilities here. So I must ask you not to press me on it.'' He went on to talk about the "last hangings'' in Bermuda in 1977 following the murder of Richard Sharples. The recent killing of a German tourist could have led him to exercise his powers had the doctors not found the killer mentally ill and had the charge altered to manslaughter due to diminished responsibility. "He's in Casemates'' -- Bermuda's Napoleonic era prison is visible from the governor's window -- "on a life term.'' But philosophically, I asked, how can he still favour hanging? He again stalled behind his constitutional position. I challenged him that he was almost replying as if he didn't believe in capital punishment... "Nooh. I'm trying to choose words which allow proper reticence to be maintained simply because of my constitutional duty.'' In 1976 Waddington told the Leeds jury two stories about his client. One, alibi; Kiszko wasn't there and didn't kill the girl: ie, the truth. Two, Kiszko was there, did kill the girl but did so under diminished responsibility because he was receiving testosterone injections for his hypogonadism: ie., something which seemed to fit the facts. Tactically, to deny the guilt of one's client then concede it in the next breath seems poor advocacy. So why had he run the two defences side by side? "I must stop you here.'' Waddington began to explain how he had had to threaten legal action against another newspaper. He also turned to a statement he made to the Press Association. This spelt out that Waddington had authority from Kiszko to run the diminished responsibility defence, a fact which is supported by his junior, Philip, now Judge Clegg, and no one denies. The governor came on the tiniest bit heavy: "Now I do want you to bear that in mind ...'' What I could not understand, I said, is why Kiszko allowed him to proceed with diminished responsibility if he didn't kill the girl. "I don't know. I'm not going to comment on the case further but I can think of circumstances and it was a most difficult case. You've got to bear in mind that Mr. Kiszko had made a full confession and did not allege that any oppression was used to obtain the confession from him.'' Clegg, the junior counsel, wrote in 1986: "With hindsight I think the defence team, myself included, made an error of judgment. Instead of forgetting about diminished responsibility and running alibi for all it was worth, we endeavoured to preserve the manslaughter option ... These pleas are mutually exclusive. I fear it was a case of trying to have our cake and eat it.'' At the trial, Waddington argued that the testosterone injections may have changed Kiszko from a gentle man to a child-sex killer. Although the man who was administering those injections, Dr. (now Professor) David Anderson, then of Manchester University, came to Leeds Crown Court, Waddington did not call him. After Kiszko was cleared, Professor Anderson said: "The one thing I was not prepared to say is that the injection would have turned him into a raving sex maniac.'' Another doctor gave evidence, but he was not an eminent endocrinologist nor had he been treating Kiszko with the injections. Had Anderson been called by Waddington, the significant of Kiszko's infertility might have emerged, and, also, the discrepancy between the semen samples.

When I asked why the doctor wasn't called, Waddington said: "Well I could tell you but I am not going to tell you. I don't think I should get into the detail of this.'' At my mention of the consultant, Waddington interjection: "Stephen Sedley, who acted for Kiszko before the Court of Appeal, withdrew any allegation that I had acted improperly and withdrew any allegation that I had acted without his authority. And that's the end of that.'' During the trial a woman juror overheard a rumour that "even his barristers have tried to get him to plead guilty'' -- something which seems prejudicial to a fair hearing. The trial was stopped and the judge proposed to counsel, prosecutor Peter Taylor, now Lord chief Justice, and defence, David Waddington, that the case should go ahead, subject to their agreement. What happened? "I seem to remember that it was decided that we should go ahead.

But it's a long time ago and I wouldn't be able to tell you precisely what happened.'' Clegg's recollection, written up in 1976, was more clear: "Without the opportunity for consultation my leader had to make a snap decision and decided to acquiesce in the course proposed by the judge ...

Strictly speaking, we should have asked Mr. Kiszko for his views before agreeing to the course proposed by the judge.'' Waddington bungled the defence, badly. The jury found Kiszko guilty by 10 to two and the judge gave him life. Waddington became a junior Home Office minister in the early 80s. One of his jobs was to visit prisons, a task, he told me, he did not enjoy. "The story in the Home Office was that Willie Whitelaw would go up to people and say: `How long are you in for?' And Willie would reply: `Well done, well done. Carry on.' I couldn't do that.'' His client did not enjoy his time in British prisons either.

Kiszko's mother, Charlotte, never gave up hope for her son. She took the case to a Todmorden solicitor, Campbell Malone. The day the new appeal was written up, Malone learnt that a new Home Secretary had been appointed, David Waddington. The appeal was `in the pipeline' -- in Waddington's phrase -- until he left the Home Office.

Eventually, Mrs. Thatcher fell, Waddington left for the House of Lords and new Home Secretary Kenneth Baker asked the West Yorkshire Police to reinvestigate the case. Detectives discovered the evidence that proved Kiszko's innocence in the spring of 1991. But long before, Kiszko had gone mad. He had been diagnosed "schizophrenic, with delusions of innocence''. The irony was even crueller: because he had not admitted his guilt, the prison authorities had not treated his schizophrenia for a long time. It was, as Prospero said: "A torment to lay upon the damned.'' After prison, Kiszko said: "I missed the comforts of home, driving, going out and doing things in town; basically, all the things freedom can give you.'' For the future: "I am hoping I will meet Miss Right.'' He never did, but died of a heart attack on the anniversary of his arrest, just before Christmas last year. So he and Charlotte only had one Christmas together after his arrest 16 years before. The police believe they now know who the real killer of Lesley Molseed was, but they lack the evidence to prosecute. The trail has gone too cold. Charlotte is very sick. She has confronted her troubles with humour and nobility. Lord Waddington is heaped with honour, but of the two parallel lives it is not difficult to determine who is the more remarkable person.

The conversation with Waddington, which lasted two and a half hours, ended with a tour of the gardens -- "that's the palm planted by Winston Churchill'' -- and a warm handshake. As I walked back down the sweep of the drive to the arthritic zzzz of downtown Hamilton, it struck me that Waddington was not the ogre I had expected. He had been more anxious, more complicated and more human than his notices would suggest.

It is hard to divine serious wrong in a spent force. Bermuda may get its independence some day, but nobody is the great big world outside will give much of a damn. Waddington will sit out his governorship as the sun sinks on the empire nobody much believes in any more, with the drum beat from Newbolt's poem fading, softly, to the echo: "Play up! Play up! And play the game!''