A friend of mine who lives here wants to start a literary festival and asked me if I had any advice for him. He’s a nice fellow and very friendly with my daughter, but he’s also the type who, had he been on board the Titanic, would have thought that the engines had stopped in order to take on some ice. In other words, he’s a naive man who believes in literature and writers and doesn’t realise that both commodities are unknown and probably deemed dangerous up here among the glitterati.
Perhaps I exaggerate, but I have yet to see any lovers of literature among the new arrivals: pushy, hungry bankers from Geneva, newly minted Brits who can’t pronounce the letter ‘H’, vulgar short and stubby types from the Gulf, and women-abusing Saudis. Nor is my friend’s idea as original as it sounds. Yours truly had the same one 20 years ago — it was called the Gstaad Symposium — and it hit pay dirt right off the bat, as they say in the now lawless and burning US of A. My first three guests were Alistair Horne, Lady Thatcher and Andrew Roberts, not a bad bunch for starters. All three packed them to the rafters. Then a childhood friend, ex-beer magnate and my then fund manager Charles Fix (recently departed), had a very bad idea: invite speakers who lectured on money matters. ‘People are far more interested in making money than in dead men who made history,’ said Fix. I was partly distracted back then — women troubles — and allowed him to run it. After a while came Madoff, and that was that.
My problem is that I get easily bored and running the symposium took up a lot of my time.
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