My father was the best of England 

I always think of my father at this time of year. In particular, I go back to the summer of 1997 – the year he died and the year the England he knew died as well.

We always spent July and August at his house in Italy, with gardens that tumbled down to the sea. There was a comforting symmetry to those days. The mornings began with the BBC World Service; the evenings were spent mixing white ladies and arguing over the newspapers I had bought in the port, with its boats bobbing on crystalline waters, and its chattering girls with gazelle-like eyes and flowers in their hair. Neighbours would come in from tennis, bringing house guests – ex Queen Juliana of the Netherlands, that swan of swans Lee Radziwill, Dave Cameron, George Osborne – and much laughter. You went to bed in the confidence that tomorrow could only bring the same happiness as today; and that when you went home, it was to the same country. Lazy, golden days, with the symmetry of a Greek vase.

But that summer I suspected my father was ill. I noticed that he choked on his food and couldn’t smoke the cigars he loved so much. He was losing a great deal of weight when I left and was worried he would never see England again. When, a few days later, my telephone rang at two in the morning, I thought it was someone calling to tell me he had died. It wasn’t my father, though – it was the Princess of Wales, who had been in a car crash in Paris. I was winded, as I had known her and liked her. But I was more shocked by the reaction to her death.