Perils of love

Gstaad

The bad news is I had yet another birthday – 67 – along with my friend Claus von Bulow, who hit a double seven. Claus, incidentally, has turned into a fine theatre critic in his mature years, reviewing with grace and insight and quoting from the numerous wits and wise men and women he has known. And speaking of old age, I wish there was a bit more respect for ladies who die in their nineties – i.e., Diana Mosley. Is there so little imagination left among the hacks that every printed cliché about her had to be repeated ad nauseam?

So Hitler came to her wedding. So what? It was before the war, for Christ’s sake. The King of England had drinks with Adolf at just about that time. Did she denounce Jews to the Gestapo? She did not. Did she encourage Nazis to kill Jews? She did not. Did she kill anyone herself? She did not. Finally, did she cheer when the Nazis did beastly things to people? She did not.

Kim Philby was personally responsible for countless deaths of British agents, yet the traitor was treated with kid gloves when he finally croaked. Ditto all his queer traitor buddies. Fran’ois Mitterrand was a Vichy high-up, yet rose to the highest office. Something very wrong here, just as there’s something very wrong when homicidal psychopaths like Mengistu, Mugabe and Charles Taylor are walking around free while Slobodan Milosevic is being tried for crimes against humanity in The Hague. (Trying to keep the union alive, albeit in a very heavy-handed manner, does not make one the equivalent of a brutal murderer like Taylor; yet Slobo is a no-no, while Taylor is living it up in a Nigerian villa.)

The reason everyone heaps opprobrium on Diana Mosley is that she was upper-class, right-wing, and refused to apologise to busybodies for having said some silly things when young and in love.