St Tropez My father died on 14 July, 1989, in an obvious if somewhat self-defeating gesture against the 200-year celebration of the French Revolution. I always think of my dad on the infamous day which is France’s national holiday, especially when I’m on the Riviera, a once magical place where he first took me as
When I got back from Pamplona I hadn’t slept in a bed or washed my hair for a week. There was a red stain around my neck where my sweat had mixed with the dye in my St Fermin neckerchief. I was badly sunburned. There was a suppurating graze on my shoulder and a cold
Mount Kenya, at altitude Among my many defects is the inability ever to be satisfied. We have two children and I want more. I have 29 cattle and I want a lot more. I live in the most beautiful part of Kenya and I covet other people’s big ranches. I walk into other people’s houses
The Italians are an easy-going lot as a rule. Except when it comes to domestic matters. I do not refer to politics, of course, but to matters pertaining to the household. When my parents owned a house outside Pisa, they employed a cook called Amelia and a maid whose name is now a long-distant memory
Q. Having just sold a flat, I have some spare cash which I wish to put to good use for my family. My grandson George recently had a nasty operation on his knee, and my daughter was, at the time, not quite sure how much the medical insurance would pick up. I sent her a
On one of those discussion programmes, not about books but about buying books, Mariella Frostrup has just said, ‘We shall be discussing that momentarily.’ If only that had been true. Now what I really want to write about is a grammatical solecism I have been convicted of. In the politest possible way, Andrew Wilton, a
