Q. I live two hours from London so when friends invite me to their book launches it is quite enough of an effort to get up to the capital without then having to find my way to some ‘ironic’ party venue. I recently had to walk ten minutes from the Tube to attend a launch in the basement of a pub near Tower Bridge, for example. Another launch was held at ‘The Old Horse Hospital’, some sort of underground cavern built in 1797 for the stabling of cabbies’ horses and into which you descend via a ramp instead of stairs. What on earth is wrong with the Polish Hearth Club on Exhibition Road, which used to fit the bill for every party giver, whatever their pretensions?
— G.A.W., Pewsey, Wiltshire
A. Rumour had it that the Polish Hearth Club had closed down which turns out to be false. Today you would pay £2,400 to give a typical book launch there. This would include wine for 150, canapés for 120 and the service charge for the waiters. You can substitute their house wine for another at a corkage cost of £7 per bottle. Writers increasingly now pay for their own book launches and many favour the Georgian Society’s exquisite home at 6 Fitzroy Square, in London. You will pay between £800 and £1,200 to ‘dry hire’ two Adam rooms and a library and then supply your own wine, waiters and canapés, which would work out at roughly the same: £2,400.
Q. How can I convince my daughter and son to write thank you letters without a blazing stand up row?
— Name and address withheld
A. The race is not to the swift or the battle to the strong. Explain that in 2012 you can stand out from your peers by doing the one thing they are not doing.
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