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. ‘People will be turned off…’

How very typical.