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Nothing is more important to a journalist than his integrity. The founders of the Independent were men of such unyielding principle that they would not allow their journalists to go on freebies. On other papers most journalists handled the integrity/freebie issue in the time-honoured fashion: by abusing any hospitality they were given — trashing a hotel room, getting weeping drunk, pawing the mayor’s wife — and then writing a mocking piece about those who had squandered fine food, wine and linen on them. That way, the hacks reasoned, nobody could say that they had been bought. Their honour was intact.

These days I don’t have the energy for integrity. It’s a young man’s caper. So here comes the plug. Last September, as a late summer treat, my wife and I travelled by train from Rome to Bologna via Florence, staying as guests of Rocco Forte’s hotels in Rome (the Hotel de Russie) and in Florence (the Hotel Savoy) and finally, at at our own expense, in Bologna, at the three-star, come-as-you-are Palace Hotel.

The Hotel de Russie, on the edge of the Piazza del Popolo, is absolutely bloody fantastic. It has a terraced garden with orange and fig trees that stretches almost as far as the Villa Borghese. The place is so swish it makes you giggle. Our room, which was about the size of the editorial offices of The Spectator, had black parquet floors, grey closets and tables, huge sofas. The upholstery and walls were, to quote the hotel literature, in ‘delicate and restful pastel hues’, and the literature was not exaggerating. There was a Bang & Olufsen TV, and a bed to die for, or in. In the marble bathroom the lighting was so subtle that it took ten years off your age. Even the make-up mirror did not make you (i.e.,