The right woman

Unlike Peregrine Worsthorne, I thought the Duff Cooper diaries were interesting and terrific, and also made me envious as hell. Oh, to have lived back then. People sure had fun. I particularly liked the part where Duff puts down a certain party as boring because of the presence of spivs. Well, lucky old Duff. If he were around nowadays, he’d be writing about some sponsored event where among the spivs he might run into a gent of sorts.

Of course, one could have fun back then, because the barbarians were still outside the gates. No journalists, no people in trade, no cheap celebrities, no It girls, no New Labour. One thing I have not understood is the complaint from some reviewers about Duff Cooper’s infidelities. He stayed married until the end, didn’t he? And his wife adored him to the end, didn’t she? And some men have stronger sex drives than others, don’t they? We can’t all be expected to be Harold Macmillans, get cuckolded and go to the Beefsteak and talk with the chaps. Plus another thing. Women, real women, that is, adore womanisers, and Don Giovanni wasn’t written by Beaumarchais because he was a cad and a seducer, but because he was adored by women. Punto basta.

I think it was Sir Peregrine who wrote that Duff’s infidelities caused Diana to take drugs. What bullshit. She was taking morphia, as she called it, long before she married, with her girlfriends in order to have fun. I’ve only been administered morphine after being under the knife. But I get no thrill from morphine. Cocaine is another matter, and I think — perhaps my memory is playing tricks on me — that I took some coke with Lady Diana Cooper back in the early Eighties.