14 November 2009

Follow the leader

New York

At an outdoor luncheon party in Sussex celebrating Willy Shawcross’s birthday some years ago, I asked his then 95-year-old father whom he found the most interesting man at Nuremberg. ‘Goering,’ was the monosyllabic reply. ‘I mean from both sides,’ I said. ‘Goering,’ said Lord Shawcross. He later told me how the Nazi would catch out the American prosecutor Jackson in some howler, correct him, then smile at Shawcross, who had trouble not smiling back.

I saw a lot of William last week here in the Bagel, as he is over for his book on the Queen Mother,...

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Opportunity knocks

I met Combo at dawn. I was standing on the Malawian shore of the lake watching the sun rise over the mountains in Mozambique and she came and stood wordlessly beside me and we watched together. After a while I offered her a swig from the bottle I was holding. ‘No,’ she said, without taking her eyes away from the sun. ‘I am too drunk.’

It was the first sunrise of a four-day music festival. I’d been dancing all night on the beach. A line of four middle-class English girls were kneeling in a row at the water’s edge...

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7 November 2009

Backing Zac

New York

‘Why would he run for Parliament?’ screams the headline in the New York Times. A subheading lists ‘An inherited passion for women, gambling, the environment and politics’. As I start to read, I fear the worst, but as it turns out it could have been a lot worse. Zac Goldsmith’s name is big in Britain, less so in America, although in green circles he’s an international prince. Although meant rhetorically, it’s quite dumb to ask why a person would run for Parliament, as if being rich and normal — liking women — disqualifies one from holding office. In...

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Table talk

Seven hours between flights at Nairobi airport and nowhere to smoke. So I bought a ten-dollar transit visa, left the airport precincts and headed for the nearest bar. It was called The Pub. The white-shirted, bow-tied waiters saw me coming and greeted me with a chuckle, as if they were thinking, ‘Here comes another nicotine addict on his ten-dollar transit visa.’

I hadn’t been settled at my outside table for more than a minute with a Tusker and a fag when a brisk, unshaven man asked if he could share it. He was on a three-hour stopover between Kinshasa...

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31 October 2009

High Life

New York

One felt the backlash against the BNP–BBC fiasco all the way to the Big Bagel, with local papers commenting on the lynching of Nick Griffin by rent-a-crowd minorities. Even people who think England is in Canada heard about it and called the freak show unfair and stage-managed, confirming the perception that Britain is a nation that has totally lost its way. Personally, I wasn’t surprised in the least. Dimbleby is a pompous clown, Jack Straw a mincing shyster of a man posing as a leader of men, and Griffin is, well, Griffin: it is the unbearable picking on...

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Low Life

Mvuu Lodge, Liwonde, Malawi

I arrived at the jetty in pitch darkness. A boat was waiting to ferry me across the river. On the other side I was handed a refreshing drink and asked to sign a waiver form exempting the management from legal action by my next of kin if I was attacked by wild animals during my stay. Then I was shown to my tent.

The ranger led me along a sandy path across open bush. It was a bit of a hike. My tent was ten yards from a lagoon, explained the ranger, when we got...

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