Alexander Larman

My ten-year-old daughter Rose is a thoroughly modern child in many respects but one endearingly old-fashioned characteristic that she has is a deep love of Enid Blyton. She thrilled to the Malory Towers books, as well as the BBC’s uncharacteristically old-fashioned adaptation, and was equally enamoured of the The Secret Seven, although curiously, she was left entirely cold by the wilder antics of the The Famous Five.   However, a particular favourite were the four Faraway Tree books that Blyton wrote between 1939 and 1951, at the peak of her popularity and fame. They are hardly great literature, but as usual with Blyton, are rich in imaginative vigour, as she follows the fortunes of Jo, Bessie and Fanny, a trio of girls who discover the Faraway Tree.

When most readers think of the late novelist David Lodge, it is his peerlessly funny and incisive campus novels, such as Changing Places and Small World, that immediately come to mind. While his satires on progressive academia are indeed some of his finest achievements, this is down to Lodge’s Catholicism, which was not merely a religious faith but a central guiding principle of his writing – if you were being pretentious, you might say ‘a calling’ – and his life. He may have called himself ‘an agnostic Catholic’, and from a religious perspective, this may have been true, but it remained a vital part of his literary career.

Last week, I had the pleasure of heading to the Freud Museum in Hampstead for the launch of Zoe Strimpel’s much-discussed new book Good Slut. Not only was the venue one of the most splendid I’ve been to for a party of this kind, but the guest list – which included The Spectator’s esteemed editor – was suitably glittering for a Thursday evening in early March. Everyone was on top form, much jollity was had, and by the time the author gave a suitably witty speech from the top of the staircase that Sigmund Freud once ascended and descended, a fabulous time had been had by all.  Would that this was the norm for all book launches.

Yesterday marked the 35th anniversary of the death of Serge Gainsbourg at 62 from a heart attack. The only real surprise is that he ever made it to such an age. Gainsbourg, whose unlovely but strangely beguiling countenance can best be likened to a garden gnome left outside in the rain for too long, was a performer and composer who epitomised French popular music of the 1960s and 1970s in all its bizarre contradictions. Compared to such wholesome British figures as Cliff Richard and Tom Jones, Gainsbourg was a seedy, almost sinister figure whose demeanour gave off an odour of stale aftershave, Gitanes and day-old red wine.  That he was also a songwriter of genius who has influenced countless other musicians – everyone from Jarvis Cocker and Radiohead to R.E.

I have recently returned from a fleeting visit to the City of Light. As usual, Paris itself was a delight. It is an architectural and historic marvel that nevertheless manages to offer the best food and wine in the world at all kinds of prices, and somehow also has a respectable number of quirky and interesting independent shops and boutiques amidst the more anticipated international names. In other words, any trip to the French capital should be an alloyed pleasure. So why, when I arrived back at St Pancras, did I all but sink to my knees in gratitude that I was once back in rainy old Blighty, and that the land of the Belle Époque was a distant memory?