Jeremy Clarke Jeremy Clarke

Lunch with Max Beerbohm’s brother’s grandson

He was the man who coined the phrase ‘P-p-p pick up a Penguin!’

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issue 14 March 2015

It’s a silly, chippy complex, I know, but I often feel, on the rare occasions that I am induced to attend a lunch or dinner party, that I don’t belong. This truth or delusion occasionally overwhelms me and I sit there, paralysed, unhappy and silent. It’s a pity. Today we were six for Sunday lunch and so far — apart from knocking over the coatstand, twice, during what one would have thought to be the simple act of hanging a jacket on one of the hooks, and breaking it in two — so good.

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