I don’t mind rude letters, really I don’t. I don’t mind much, actually, which probably illustrates a fatal weakness in my character. But I do mind having eggs thrown at me. There I was opening my front door the other evening and, wham, splat, an egg was hurled in my direction. With unusual dexterity, I
I was lunching with some friends the other day (I don’t lunch for every column, incidentally, but these happened to be friends from abroad whom I hadn’t seen for a while). I took them to a restaurant and we began catching up on our news over the gazpacho. ‘How’s so-and-so?’ I asked of a girl
The other day I was asked by a friend to a lunch party. I told her that, unfortunately, I would have to leave early as I had a very important appointment at three in Westbourne Park Villas. ‘Oooh,’ she said, intrigued. What is it? I duly told her and that was that. The lunch turned
The French have always enjoyed delivering snubs to les rosbifs. But now they have gone a step trop far. All red-blooded Englishmen, and loyal Englishwomen, should be inflamed this week by their shocking insult to our greatest rose anglaise, Miss Kate Moss. Miss Moss, the nation’s greatest natural product, has been dumped by Chanel as
As I was sitting in the car the other day, I looked to my right and saw a billboard depicting a pair of giant legs. Glancing up, I noticed, for what must be the umpteenth time, the face of Brad Pitt emerging somewhat incongorously from a Greek helmet. There was a gaggle of girls standing
Cape Town Cape Town is as different from Johannesburg as Cheltenham is from London. Actually, this is to insult Cape Town. But whereas Jo’burg, being the country’s business capital with a population of nearly ten and a half million people, is a sprawling, bustling metropolis, Cape Town is a virtual village. The proximity of so
Johannesburg The South African sun is beating down on my brother’s garden. We have just returned from a shopping mall in Johannesburg. Jo’burg is full of shopping malls, massive American-style walkways. My brother and I have been sitting outside the Seattle Coffee Company watching people as they pass by. South Africans are averse to tanning.
Virginia I have had for a long time a certain obsession. It began in France when I was about 14 or 15. To be exact, it began in Paris, in the restaurant of the George V hotel. It happened when I first saw the brown topping oscillating towards me, giving off the warm scent of
Virginia On a Sunday afternoon in the winter there is practically nothing that well-off people in the state of Virginia like to do more than go beagling. So it was that I found myself in the grounds of an ante-bellum plantation house last weekend along with a pack of small dogs, assorted senior citizens and
At dinner the other night in Washington I was sitting next to Robert Redford. Actually, this is a slight fib. I was in a restaurant called Nora’s – which, incidentally, was the first organic restaurant in the capital – and he was at the next table. He is a man of stature; that is, he
It seems a bit odd, learning to drive in one’s thirties. Readers will wonder why I have put it off for so long. The answer is that, as Eliza Doolittle thought, it is jolly nice being driven around in the back of a taxi. The expense of the fares was justified by the cost of
At a dinner-party in Italy, from which country I have now returned, a question came up. This was, are women really bitchier than men, and, if so, why, when their behaviour can be so much more exemplary? For some reason this question was addressed to me. I hadn’t recalled, alas, saying a bad word about
Ihave been singing for my supper here in Italy in a big way. For the first course, the pasta, the entrée and the gelati. The manageress of the hotel, Il Pellicano, heard from a well-wisher (one can only hope it was a well-wisher) that I can just about croak out a few Cole Porter standards,
I looked out of the window the other day and noticed that there was something funny looking about the car (a red Honda, if anyone is interested). The car is always parked overnight in the garage driveway, the entrance to which is strongly secured by a bolted green gate. Nonetheless, there was something funny looking
I have a summer cold. My eyes feel as if they have been rammed into the back of my head by pokers, my chest tells me that a boa constrictor has wrapped itself around it, and the rest of my body is convinced that it does not belong to me but to the Michelin man.
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
It was extremely difficult to get a flight to Budapest last weekend. I had promised my friends the Karolyis, who have been a feature of this column, that I would attend an opera they were giving in the grounds of their house at a place called Föt. Yet Hungary seems to have become the most
Should this column be more frugal or less frugal? As an unelected column should it be allowed to ask someone else to squeeze its toothpaste tube? Should it be required to give an account of its expenditure, its private minicabs and the cost of refurbishing itself? If I have to read another word about Prince
I went to church last Sunday. This will surprise some of my friends. I am not noted as a regular attender of Church of England services. This is not because I don’t believe in God. But our relationship has always been a private one. One in which He or I can make our excuses and
Please excuse my returning to the subject of teeth, but I’ve had molars on my mind. Since my trip to America where my British teeth were looked upon with horror, I have been examining them day and night. It would be fair to say that this has become an obsession. In restaurants with friends and