Charmed life

My Negroni-soaked lunch with Laurence Olivier

Breakfast is my preferred meal, in case you’re interested. I broke my fast this week with my walking laser-light of a friend, William Shawcross, at Fischer’s in Marylebone, which serves an egg rosti to rival that of Café Sacher in Vienna. Fischer’s consists of a small entrance area, a bar to the left, and at

My night with a murderer

My father met a murderer once; a carrot-topped former chorine called Ann Woodward, who gave her veddy veddy posh husband both barrels after discovering he intended to divorce her for someone more upper-class. She got off after her mother-in-law, Elsie, who preferred a killer in the family to a scandal, bought off the American cops.

I’ve finally solved the mystery of the Mayerling Affair

It was the mother of royal scandalabras, as Walt Winchell might have said, and remains one of the greatest historical conundrums of all time. I refer to what became known as the Mayerling Affair: the sensational apparent murder-suicide of Crown Prince Rudolf of Austria, son and heir of Emperor Franz Josef and the tragic Empress