Society

Mr S was saddened to hear of the untimely death of Mark Shand, the Duchess of Cornwall’s brother. He was a kind and witty man: a natural bon viveur. Parties for his charity, Elephant Family, which campaigned to protect the habitats of the endangered Asian elephant, were always splendid affairs. Shand’s vivacity and generosity came to the fore and partygoers gave generously. Mr S remembers one bash at Lakshmi Mittal’s gaffe. Lalit Modi, Vijay Mallya, Michiel Mol, Sir Evelyn de Rothschild, Joanna Lumley, Sarah Ferguson and countless faceless financiers were dolling out cash like nobody’s business. London society has lost one of its most dashing players. And the Indian elephant

Russell Brand won’t let go of his row with the BBC. He popped up as the mystery guest at Letters Live (a spin off from the wonderful Twitter account @LettersOfNote, where assorted luvvies read great letters from the past). Inevitably, Brand screwed up his reading. He tried to rescue the situation by quipping: ‘Is this like when I broke the BBC?’ This was met by assorted groans and the odd clap. Brand’s references to his suspension and departure from the BBC over the ‘Sachs-gate’ affair in 2008 are getting very tiresome indeed. Mr S was under the impression that Brand was busy plotting a revolution.

Ever since the Berlin Wall came down, I’ve been pottering around eastern Germany, where my father’s family came from, and fled from at the end of the second world war. I thought my interest would fade as my father’s fatherland was absorbed by the Bundesrepublik — but for me, this strange hinterland grows more intriguing with each passing year. Take the historic heartland of Hitler’s Reich, subject it to 45 years of communism and then 25 years of capitalism. What do you end up with? A mad mishmash of past and present, the last century laid bare. Naturally, the former GDR isn’t uniformly pretty (indeed, large swaths of it are