To Fort Belvedere for a ball that most likely will discourage any more balls because of its brilliance and perfection. Galen and Hilary Weston, who lease the historic house that was once the playground of Edward VIII and the venue where he signed the Instrument of Abdication in front of his three brothers, are amazing
‘I’m wasted,’ said Trev, meaning not that his life is futile, but that his mind was overwhelmed by illegal drugs. He conceded it. It wasn’t often that drugs ruined him, but tonight they had, and credit where credit’s due. We were a disparate post-pub gathering of about a dozen people. At a push you might
If we had to fight a war on the home front I’m fairly sure we would be stuffed. I base this claim on what happens if you try to buy a sandwich at ten past three in Surrey. You walk into a small shop in a nice village. You select a sandwich from the chiller
Tony Blair and Bill Clinton must be very happy about how they have fared since leaving political office, for each has since become enormously rich. Tony Blair may well be the richest British prime minister since the 14th Earl of Derby in the 19th century, and Bill Clinton is among the ten richest American presidents
The Times headline on Tuesday was rather cruel: ‘Stars turn down No. 10 invitation.’ This was a reference to the party the press dubbed ‘Cool Britannia II’, David Cameron’s attempt to recreate the glamour of Tony Blair’s star-studded Downing Street reception in 1997. ‘They wanted Daniel Craig and Benedict Cumberbatch,’ said the Times. ‘They got
Q. My 16-year-old son, who has recently had his first experiences of Clubland, has observed to me, his mother, that men’s table manners degenerate inside men-only clubs. Is this true? — A.D.M., London SW1 A. Allegedly so. Men seem hard-wired to let standards slip when the civilising influence of women is absent. According to the
It was a sort of wake. An old friend’s father had died, and some of us were helping him and his wife deal with oddments from the paternal cellar. As he had made 91, enjoyed cantankerous good health until earlier this year, and had always taken a thoroughly unsentimental view of the human condition, there
It’s funny how people hardly know what they are saying. I read recently of diplomats going to Riyadh ‘to diffuse tensions over anti-Islamic stickers’. Did the writer mean defuse? Probably. He was trying to say ‘reduce’ tensions and just reached for the nearest dead metaphor from the shelf. Still, it doesn’t do to be too
Gandhi would test his resolve by sleeping between two naked virgins, an avenue not really open to me, as my wife is an Anglican vicar: though Anglicanism imposes almost no constraints on your behaviour or beliefs nowadays, it still frowns on sleeping with naked virgins, especially if they are of the opposite sex. So my
