A spectator sees most of the City’s game

My arrival was marked by a memorandum: ‘LIBEL. Mr Christopher Fildes and Mr Auberon Waugh have joined the staff of The Spectator. As from today, The Spectator is no longer insured against libel. Gatley’s Libel and Slander may be consulted in my office. Nigel Lawson, Editor.’ We survived that, and in time Algy Cluff, as chairman, suggested that I should write a column on matters City and suburban. The phrase was Milton’s — from Paradise Regained, Dot Wordsworth tells me — but Captain Threadneedle, my racing correspondent, derived it from Epsom, home of the City and Suburban Handicap. That seemed appropriate, for (as the Sunday papers used to tell us) all human life is there. My book, A City Spectator (Nicholas Brealey, £12.99), is built on and from these observations of a City changing at breakneck speed, but still intensely human. You may recognise some of them:

I know I should keep a straight face, but the spectacle of banks finding new ways to lose money never fails to tickle me.