Home > The Magazine > The Week

Saturday 22 November 2008

Dare to dream and make your ultimate trip a reality

The latest culture as recommended by our staff

Michael Henderson

Michael Henderson suggests

Email registration

Free weekly email update

Great products and special offers for Spectator readers

Click here for great value events

Click here for exclusive articles, offers, tasting notes and discussion

Diary

Andrew Roberts

Wednesday, 5th December 2007

Andrew Roberts's diary of the week

Then off to drinks at the Special Forces Club in Knightsbridge to celebrate Churchill’s 133rd birthday. Saying goodbye to Mary Soames at the top of the stairs, we looked down at the walls of photos of young men and women who had served in SOE, MI6, the SAS and so on. She sighed for a moment, and confessed to the bittersweet feeling she always felt on climbing those stairs. ‘So many of them died truly dreadful deaths,’ she said.

Off to a small dinner party at Aspinall’s in Mayfair, where I sat between Margaret Thatcher and Enoch Powell’s widow Pam, both of whom were on really fine form. Alberico Penati, the genius head chef who has resigned from Harry’s Bar, was starting at Aspinall’s that evening, and wielded a truffle for our risotto that was not much smaller than his head. Since Mark Birley’s sale of his clubs, and subsequent death, the tectonic plates of London’s über-clubland seem to be shifting perceptibly, especially since the retirements of Alfredo and Bruno, the veteran maîtres d’hôtel respectively of Annabel’s and Mark’s Club.

Various chums have made it into next year’s Who’s Who, I see, including Flora Fraser, Emily Maitlis and David Sexton. One’s first thought is why did Who’s Who take so long to admit them (except Emily, London society’s youngest and most elegant gatecrasher)? My advice is not to put down any smart-arse gags under ‘Recreations’, otherwise you have to think up a different one every year or you look rather stale. When I first got into Who’s Who (in my thirties) I asked Woodrow Wyatt what I should put down, as I didn’t really have any recreations that weren’t immoral, illegal or fattening. ‘Tell them to mind their own business,’ he advised. What would Speccie readers suggest, since, as you can see from the above, I’ve now completely given up name-dropping?

Previous page 1 | 2 | 3

More articles from: Andrew Roberts | this section

Print this article | Email to a friend | Permalink | Comments (2)

Post this entry to: del.icio.us | Digg | Newsvine | NowPublic | Reddit

true blue

December 6th, 2007 4:17pm

onanism?

Melmotte

December 7th, 2007 8:22pm

Superb self-parody. It ensures your safety from ppublic ridicule. Presently means soon, not now.

A child of our time

From the economic and psychological bedlam of the global downturn has emerged a particularly dangerous false dichotomy: namely, that there is somehow a choice for ministers over the next few years between economic reconstruction and the repair of Britain’s broken society, and that the government (whether Labour or Conservative) must prioritise the former at the expense of the latter.

Diary

Anne Robinson

The daughter and I spent the last few days before the American election in Arizona.

Politics

Fraser Nelson

Fraser Nelson reviews the week in politics

The Spectator's Notes

Charles Moore

‘A money-financed tax cut is essentially equivalent to Milton Friedman’s famous “helicopter drop” of money.’ So said Ben Bernanke, now the chairman of the Fed, in a speech about how to ward off the ‘extremely small’ chance of deflation, which he delivered in 2002.