Jeremy Clarke Jeremy Clarke

I am walking to the Spectator party — sober, clean and in all my finery

And I know I'm not going to feel this good again for a while

[Getty Images/iStock] 
issue 19 July 2014

They do love a party at The Spectator. I was invited to four in ten days last week: the Apollo Summer party, the Spectator ‘At Home’ Summer party, the annual Spectator ‘Meet the Readers’ afternoon tea party, and our Spectator arts editor, the great Liz Anderson’s farewell party.

I hadn’t been up to town this year, and on the train journey up from Devon, I felt like a hick up from the sticks. But I love London and I had that same old heart-lift as I stepped down from the train under the great iron roof of Paddington station, then passed along the platform beneath that giant unkempt simpleton representing the Great Western Railway employees who fell in the first world war. But my favourite arriving-in-London moment was yet to come.

I went six stops on the Bakerloo line, climbed up out of Charing Cross station into the dazzle and wingbeat of Trafalgar Square’s airy 50 acres.

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