It’s been a tough year for socialites

Here we go again, the annual holiest of holies is upon us, although to this oldie last Christmas feels as though it was only yesterday. Funny how time never seemed to pass quickly during those lazy days of long ago, but now rolls off like a movie calendar showing the days, months, years flashing by.

I wrote my first Christmas column for this magazine 43 years ago, sitting in my dad’s office on Albemarle Street. I remember it well because I used every cliché known to man and then some (patter of little feet… children’s noses pressed against snowy windows). The then editor, Alexander Chancellor, said nothing to me but later told a friend that however bad it was, it was better than the Greek political stuff I had been filing.

When today’s prime minister was boss of The Spectator 20 years ago, I tried real hard for dramatic effect and wrote about the worst Christmas ever — Athens 1944 during a fight to the death between royalists and communists. We won, making it possible for your intrepid correspondent to write a story about it 60 years later. Boris sent me a note praising the piece that made me feel gooey all over.

They say that nostalgia is corny, but for me it’s one of the many joys of Christmas. Everyone remembers past Christmases, whether happy or sad, and mine are mostly the former. The date of our Lord’s birth made it possible for German and British soldiers to play a friendly football match during the Great War. Just imagine if the troops on both sides had refused to slaughter each other further, and demanded that the fat generals sitting on their backsides in grand country houses miles from the front duelled each other for a change.