Lunch with Max Beerbohm’s brother’s grandson

It’s a silly, chippy complex, I know, but I often feel, on the rare occasions that I am induced to attend a lunch or dinner party, that I don’t belong. This truth or delusion occasionally overwhelms me and I sit there, paralysed, unhappy and silent. It’s a pity. Today we were six for Sunday lunch and so far — apart from knocking over the coatstand, twice, during what one would have thought to be the simple act of hanging a jacket on one of the hooks, and breaking it in two — so good. The chap seated to my left — by a very surprising and agreeable coincidence, given that only the week before I had for the first time in my life read a collection of Sir Max Beerbohm’s marvellous essays —turned out to be the ‘Incomparable Max’s’ brother’s grandson, still proudly bearing the illustrious name down into the present day.