Lord Lucan, Joan Collins and the greatest dinner ever

There’s a narrow stretch of Chelsea, south of the King’s Road from Oakley Street to Ormonde Gate, that reminds me of post-war London when I first came here with my dad. Names such as Margaretta Terrace, St Loo Avenue, Alpha Place and Robinson Street bring back sweet memories of youthful innocence and desire. London back then was big on rep but ranked last on comfort. Much later, towards the end of the 1950s, Queen’s Club held the second biggest tennis tournament in the land and had just one shower in the men’s locker room. (With a dirty white curtain.) It is often said that schoolboys derive no benefit from fine architecture, and it was certainly true in my case, but what I did take in was the mood. Mood entered my consciousness very early on and it has never left it. A shadow on a windowsill, the reflected light on a sunny balcony; all bring back intense feelings and memories of youth.

Walking around last Sunday, I felt for just a moment that I was back in London as it was when I was 15 years old. The street was deserted and dead quiet, and it reminded me of the first time I walked around Kensington in 1952. London was very English back then. My father described it as a city full of people saying sorry non-stop. Paris was cosmopolitan, Rome was historical, but London was uniquely English. It had a particular smell of diesel, tea and woodburning stoves, and of tobacco. I went to a cinema in Leicester Square and everyone was smoking, mostly non-filter ciggies and pipes. (Those were the days.) Nowadays the place is healthier and very multicultural.

The trouble with a long life is memory. Not necessarily of past loves, although the ache is there at times, but of places and the way things used to be.