I’d rather live under communism than the tyranny of social media

At the time it felt like a century, but it was only 12 years. I began this column in 1977 and the Berlin Wall came down in 1989, which meant an end to the anti-communist tracts that my first editor, Alexander Chancellor, described as quasi-fascist efforts to subvert democracy. By 1977 I had been trying to get something published in The Speccie for a couple of years. I only achieved it when I abandoned right-wing politics and wrote about how one could always tell an Englishman abroad. (Brits would use flashlights to check their bill in dark and crowded Parisian nightclubs, making them persona non grata with waiters at Jimmy’s.)

Twelve years seemed a lifetime back then, and when the wall finally came down I gave a ball that was an alliterative triumph: To Celebrate the Collapse of Communism. I took the ballroom of the Savoy, a hotel that has now gone to the dogs, and named each table after a fallen commie dictator.