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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, an undertaking that took him six years of hard work. Mind you, it was worth it as he’s done a terrific job of capturing the times throughout her long life, history disguised as biography. It was when I read Willy’s The Shah’s Last Ride, almost 20 years ago, that I first understood how one should never trust the Americans, especially if one’s an ally. And how Henry Kissinger, painted as untrustworthy by Washington insiders, was the only one who acted honourably vis-à-vis the cancer-ridden Iranian looking for a place to die in peace.

Last week I walked into a chic dinner party for Willy and saw him deep in conversation with one Wesley Clark, the four-star American general of Kosovo infamy. Clark was polite and quite nice actually, but I was surprised by how little he understood the Wehrmacht’s battle tactics, which we discussed, egged on by Willy. But out of politeness to my host and hostess I did not thank Clark for helping establish a radical Muslim belt right in the middle of the Balkans. He was, after all, following orders. But taking orders from Bill Clinton or that appalling woman Albright must surely stain a soldier’s record.