Some 30 summers ago we were staying at a famously beautiful villa outside Turin; our hostess was — indeed is — renowned for her superb taste and distilled perfection of every aspect of douceur de vivre. Each night we dined in a different sylvan setting — under inky trees, in flower-filled gardens and in 18th-century rococo salons, amid porcelain bouquets of those selfsame flowers.
Another room, with candles lighting the chinoiserie panelling, is forever incised in my mind, not only for the decor but for the last course. In what appeared to be a vast rock-crystal bowl (in fact simply ice) was a fruit salad made solely of white fruit — white strawberries and white raspberries from frames and canes; white peaches and nectarines from glasshouses; white cherries, grapes and pears from orchards; white apricots from Armenia. Pale as moonbeams, its contours gleaming, this creation was as refined as the frankly edible marvels of plasterwork illustrating this ravishing, erudite book.
Will Self on his new novel, Phone, psychosis and postmodernism – Listen and subscribe to the Spectator Books podcast, hosted by Sam Leith:
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