Taki Taki

Follow the leader

Taki lives the High Life

issue 14 November 2009

New York

At an outdoor luncheon party in Sussex celebrating Willy Shawcross’s birthday some years ago, I asked his then 95-year-old father whom he found the most interesting man at Nuremberg. ‘Goering,’ was the monosyllabic reply. ‘I mean from both sides,’ I said. ‘Goering,’ said Lord Shawcross. He later told me how the Nazi would catch out the American prosecutor Jackson in some howler, correct him, then smile at Shawcross, who had trouble not smiling back.

I saw a lot of William last week here in the Bagel, as he is over for his book on the Queen Mother, an undertaking that took him six years of hard work. Mind you, it was worth it as he’s done a terrific job of capturing the times throughout her long life, history disguised as biography. It was when I read Willy’s The Shah’s Last Ride, almost 20 years ago, that I first understood how one should never trust the Americans, especially if one’s an ally.

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