Long life | 3 May 2012

I’ve been sitting on a sofa in my wife’s house in Tuscany reading an article about a new play that has just opened in New York. It’s by David Auburn, it’s called The Columnist and it’s about Joseph Alsop, a once powerful Washington journalist who died more than 20 years ago. The article, from the New York Times, says that Joe is now a completely forgotten man, but not by me. The pale terracotta-coloured cover of the sofa I’ve been sitting on is a reminder of him. For it was Joe who recommended the Washington seamstress that stitched it for me — an excellent woman who, he claimed, had been one of President Kennedy’s innumerable mistresses. The date was 1986, the Independent had just been launched, I had been appointed its first Washington correspondent, and I was furnishing the rented house in Georgetown that was to double as my home and the newspaper’s Washington office.