Diary – 7 September 2017

September is my time of year. Summer is all very well if you’re one of those golden-haired, long-limbed types who looks heavenly in a sarong and a waist chain. But for me it’s just an endless battle against heat, direct sunlight, corpulence (chiefly my own) and biting insects. Besides, there’s nothing quite like that back-to-school feeling, the promise of a new term — and a chance to catch up with friends who have been off gallivanting all summer.

Hence one of my favourite dates in our social calendar, an annual ‘end of summer’ party in Henley. It’s a bit of a schlep on a Saturday night, but always worth it, not least because the fish and chips are excellent and the hostess divine. The Prime Minister was in attendance — not that I actually saw her. But the two shifty-looking men standing next to the buffet absorbing mini quiches and muttering to themselves were unmistakably of the security persuasion. Bless them: short of having ‘Secret Service’ tattooed across their foreheads they could not have been more obvious.

My husband being absorbed in a conversation about bees, I wandered off to find my friend Simone, who introduced me to Baroness Ruth Deech, the crossbench peer. A former principal of St Anne’s College, Oxford, she is that rare thing: an academic in favour of Brexit. This has not made her too popular in liberal circles. ‘Telling people in Hampstead you voted Leave is a bit like coming out as gay in the 1950s,’ she says. ‘Even some of your oldest friends suddenly want nothing more to do with you.’ I couldn’t have put it better myself.

One of the guaranteed highlights of this autumn is bound to be the opening of the American smash-hit musical Hamilton in November, at the Victoria Palace Theatre.