In decline

New York

One more week in the Bagel and then on to good old London for two balls, a wedding and a cricket match. The latter will be a rout, as Zac Goldsmith’s Eleven are bound to do a good imitation of Iraq’s Republican Guard when up against Tim Hanbury’s supermen. Although I do not know the rules and cannot keep score, I was man of the match last year – not out – despite my captain’s decision to substitute me in the middle of my heroics. (Goldsmith moolah obviously got to him.) This year I plan a repeat as I am one year older and as a result much wiser.

Actually, I am looking forward to my return. I’ve missed my English male friends almost as much as I’ve missed the way upper-class English girls give it away like a frisbee. American women who know how to hold a fork properly are at times much too uptight; others, who hold it as if they were drilling a hole in the wall, are too downmarket. Only Southern belles are any good, but I live in the Bagel. And speaking of nice girls, Jonathan Aitken’s daughter Victoria has been living in the Bagel pursuing a music and writing career, and in turn is being pursued by a Greek prince. I gave a dinner for Tracy Lee Simmons, author of Climbing Parnassus – the best book on why Greek and Latin are all-important – and Victoria charmed everyone with her sweet manner. Tracy Simmons told me a ghastly story about his book. A top American publisher was very hot to have it, but insisted that the words Parnassus, Greek and Latin could not appear on the cover.