Welcome a volume that in all ways lives up to its title, even at a pinch a comparison with John Aubrey. The 18 characters who receive at the hands of this gentleman of the press a good-natured hearing make a great celebrity list for a party. As guests we the readers are no longer bored by Rhodesia’s Ian Smith; he springs alive in light prose. Mary Whitehouse has hidden depths. The Deedes version of Montgomery’s table talk makes the mouth water for more of the ‘idiosyncratic, dogmatic, tactless, quarrelsome’ Field Marshal. Lord Hartwell, Deedes’s former boss at the Daily Telegraph, might also be quite fun. Of Lord Spencer’s speech at Diana’s funeral, he muttered, ‘Bit over the top, I thought.’
Deedes has a similar sensitivity to cant, as we discover on joining him at Buckingham Palace in 1981.
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