A summer’s social whirl, from Bette Midler to Satan

This summer brought highs and lows, sadness and laughter, some irritating, some exhilarating. I was fortunate to be uplifted by an encounter with Leslie Bonham Carter, a remarkable woman who seems quite British but is in fact American. She is the daughter of Condé Nast, who founded the company that bears his name. He was born 145 years ago, in 1869. Leslie witnessed the full glamour of 1930s America. When the first world war came, many British grandees packed their children off to America. Young Leslie had opposite plans. All she thought of was how to get to England, to be there in its darkest hour. Diplomatic strings pulled, she sailed, barely in her teens and without either parent, in a battleship across those sub-infested waters. At 8.30 on the morning of 8 July 1943, she ‘saw my first sight of England … the England I have talked, thought and dreamed about … the England I love’.