There was an entirely forgotten leftist called Allen Ginsberg, a so-called beat poet (surely an oxymoron) who once produced a work entitled ‘Howl’. That was appropriate. It reads like a wolf on hallucinogens. The author whined that he had seen the best minds of his generation destroyed. ‘Best minds’: how would he have known? This
I once witnessed a rarer spectacle than Halley’s Comet. I heard Ted Heath tell a funny story. It related to the mid-fifties. Le grand épicier, then chief whip, found himself bear-leading Field Marshal Montgomery on a visit to a racecourse. Pol Roger, a horse belonging to Churchill, was expected to win. The principles of betting
We were discussing romanticism, with me arguing that it should be confined to the boudoir, the bedroom, the library or the stage. When it escapes into public affairs, disaster often ensues. This led to us reminiscing about romantics we had known, and one of our number denounced the late John Aspinall, who, he said, would
Insufficient attention has been paid to the history of naughty girls, who deployed allure to prosper in a male-dominated world. Moralists insisted that they would all come to a bad end. From Jezebel to Cleopatra, Lady Hamilton to Becky Sharp, many did so. But not all. Salomé died a queen; Pamela Harriman, an ambassador. There
As good conversation should, the talk meandered from the serious to the playful. One of the serious topics was overseas aid. A generation ago, Peter Bauer, as fine a scholar as ever, addressing himself to that subject, produced a lapidary dictum: ‘Much overseas aid is a subsidy from poor people in rich countries to rich
‘Stands Scotland where it did?’ As the bottles circulated, we were able to answer Macduff’s question in much more optimistic terms than would have seemed possible even a month earlier, thanks to Ruth Davidson, the Malcolm Canmore of our age. It is extraordinary. Scottish Tories spent almost 20 years on the fringes of politics, marginalised
I have been thinking about the Dark Ages. This has nothing to do with Theresa May or Jeremy Corbyn. A friend of mine, Chase Coffin-Roggeveen, has a doctoral thesis in mind about the increasing use of wine for liturgical purposes during the English Dark Ages. Like all scholars who address that period, he has to
It was a typical bank holiday. Usual English weather: glorious, until you leave home without a brolly. Then fickleness supervenes — just like the opinion polls. I was pressed by anxious enquiries. ‘You’re supposed to know about these things. There’s no chance of Corbyn winning, surely?’ On the assumption that enough of the sovereign people
‘That sweet enemy, France.’ It takes a poet to summarise centuries of military and diplomatic history. On a prosaic level, if we consider Anglo-French relations over many centuries, all the evidence vindicates Sidney’s judgment. Although there is much that each nation admires and respects in the other, we have never been natural allies. For hundreds
Over the long weekend I read a couple of bildungs-romans; one a revisit after many years, the other a recent work. In Hemingway’s words, A Moveable Feast was about living in Paris ‘when we were very poor and very happy’. The poverty was relative. Hemingway did occasionally have to skip lunch, but there was always
I argued that it was unnecessary to have made sacrifices during Lent in order to celebrate its conclusion. It is the thought that counts. Others were less sure, though none of them exhibited the stigmata of austerity. Anyway, we ate some magnificent Pascal pig, plus a delicious lamb which would have been scampering around a
We were talking about war, the desert and God. In the early Seventies, one of our number, Christopher James, had been involved in serious fighting in the struggles to stop Yemeni-backed communist insurgents from destabilising Oman. Christopher was happy to pay tribute to everyone else, but evasive about his own service in the SAS. That
Paris used to be the most self-confident city in the world. Brash, assertive, boastful: Manhattan claimed to be the best. Cool, elegant, sophisticated, supercilious: Paris knew that it was the best. This is no longer true. Paris has lost its élan, and that has created a love-hate relationship with the UK. Everyone seems to know
Eliot. After 50 years trying to make sense of his verse, and at the risk of admitting to rampant philistinism, I propose three conclusions. At his best, he is one of the finest poets in the language. Partly because he is straining language and thought to the uttermost — an analogy with the final Beethoven
Call me a sentimental old whatever, but watching a four-year old hearing The Tale of Samuel Whiskers for the first time, read by someone who could do the police in different voices, took one as far from the Waste Land as is possible. It also made me think about moggies, which brought back memories of
To the Western Isles, or at least to its embassy in Belgravia. Boisdale restaurant always claims to be extra-territorial. There was an awards ceremony, and the principal recipient was a remarkable old girl. Ninety-four years into an extraordinarily diverse life, Jean Trumpington is one of the funniest people I have ever met. She is also
I know an immensely grand aristocratic lady, impeccably mannered, with a regal grace and presence, who cannot be trusted near a tin of caviar. Apart from scoffing far more than her share, she will eventually make off with the tin itself, to lick it clean. Those of us from lesser social milieux should not only
Someone came up with a century-old quotation plangent with irony and sadness: ‘The year 1916 was cursed: 1917 will surely be better.’ That was Tsar Nicholas II. Poor fellow: tragedy for him and his family, tragedy down the decades for tens of millions of his subjects. Its spectre is still haunting Russia. Although we raised
I first ate at the London version of Harry’s Bar in the early 1990s. Back then, Jeffrey Archer and I would give each other dinner about three times a year. It was my turn and he suggested Harry’s, where he was a member but I could pay (on expenses, needless to say). I remember the
The other day, I had lunch with the grandest person I know. Forget 1066: Adrian Ziani de Ferranti can trace his Venetian ancestors to the time when St Theodore was the city’s patron saint and St Mark’s corpse still reposed in Alexandria. Ziani Doges were buried under the crypt of San Zaccaria centuries before Bellini
