High life | 7 July 2012

The Spectator lost one of its most loyal readers when Alistair Londonderry, Marquess of, died recently of that most dreaded pancreatic cancer, the very same that had killed his brother-in-law Jimmy Goldsmith 15 years before. Alistair would have been 75 in September, an age that Jimmy never even got close to. Sir James once told me that Alistair had the best brain of anyone he knew, with almost encyclopedic knowledge of politics and music. Jimmy would ring him and casually ask in those pre-Google times who the vice-president of, say, Upper Volta, was. Back would come an unpronounceable name. Goldsmith would have his secretary check it and, presto, Alistair would yet again have come up trumps. He was an expert on Liszt, himself played beautifully but mostly in private, and was the greatest pun artist of all time.

I met him 50 years ago with one of his closest friends, John Aspinall, and they immediately quizzed me — harangued me, rather — about Oscar Wilde, yours truly having made the mistake of saying I knew more than most men about the Irish playwright.