Petronella Wyatt

Like most people, I first heard or rather read of the Gothic novel in Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey. The heroine and her friend are gabbing away about The Castle of Otranto by Horace Walpole – at least I think it was The Castle of Otranto. Years ago, the BBC produced a serial based on Northanger

I have just returned from Morocco, or Marrakech, to be precise; the rose-pink city with its hidden gardens and ancient, tiled palaces. This was against the advice of an American friend who protested vigorously when I announced my visit. ‘You can’t go there,’ she howled, ‘it’s an Islamic country. They’ll all be pro-Saddam and anti-Bush.

I had my half-brother Pericles staying here in London for the first time in four years. Pericles, who is my father’s son by his third wife, Moorea, went to live in America when I was about 14. It was a very brave move at the time, as he was only 18 and had no qualifications,

I cannot help but feel sorry for Michael Trend, the disgraced Conservative MP, who allegedly defrauded the taxpayer by claiming a whopping sum in false expenses. Michael Trend’s career and perhaps his life is now in ruins and he can look forward only to an eventual ignominious obscurity. I wish to announce at once that

I hardly spend my life attending dinner parties given by the chattering classes. But I will admit to attending dinners given by people who chatter – though not in the Hampstead/Islington fashion but more in the Tory manner, if it exists any more except in muddled gobbledegook. Most of these people have been scathing about

I am not in the least bit surprised that the Americans are furious and bewildered by the churlish actions of France and Germany which are now threatening to destroy Nato. As has been pointed out, not only did hundreds of thousands of US servicemen, many of them little more than boys, die liberating Western Europe

As I wrote last week, Florida, not to mention the United States, is full of surprises. Many practising Christians show a marked lack of opposition to scientific advances that cause hysteria in Britain. One of these is cloning. Expressing my distaste for recreating human beings I used the specious argument that, surely, for the religious,

Roy Jenkins was my father’s oldest friend. They first met when they were both at Oxford. When, afterwards, they both decided to go into politics, my father pipped him to the post. Much later, when I was growing up in Wiltshire, where we had a house, two of our neighbours were Roy and his pearl-pretty

This has been the season of goodwill. Which, of course, it hasn’t. I am sorry for stating the obvious but there is always less goodwill around at Christmas than any other time of the year. The newspapers seem more vicious, more scandal-ridden and more aggressive than in spring, summer or autumn. This is principally because

‘Tis the season to be self-deprecating. Or even more self-deprecating than during the rest of the year. The traditional British custom of laughing while others tell insulting stories about you, running yourself down, making yourself look a perfect ass, and being the butt of practical jokes, while keeping a fixed grin on your face, really

As I wrote last week, there I was in the middle of the South African bush wrapped in a blanket to stave off the cold. Karl, the strapping ranger, had staved off the animals, but there seemed no remission from the biting air. On our way back to the lodge, we saw some rhino immersed

The tiny propeller plane that seemed to be made from beaten tin dipped and shuddered in the air. One of the girls opposite me turned the colour of vegetable bouillon. The pilot briskly apologised for the turbulence which he attributed to heavy clouds and the unsettled weather, unusual for this time of year in South

I have just been staying outside Rome near a town called Ladispoli. In ancient times, the area, which was a luxury seaside resort for various Roman emperors, was called Alsium. During the second Punic war it managed to exempt itself from having to send troops to fight Hannibal. Later, both Tiberius and Marcus Aurelius had

This month marks the birthday, in 1880, of the great American polemicist H.L. Mencken. Mencken was born in Baltimore, and in the 1920s and 1930s was the most feared and admired writer in the United States. He spared no one his caustic honesty; politicians, church leaders, academics, quack doctors, puritans, fanatics and other species he

The fashion folk are upon us again. The other day I was reading a list of so-called must-have fashion items in one of the newspapers. These included a Matthew Williamson evening dress, costing over £1,000 and resembling a tea towel. Other indispensables were a Chloe bag at £720, which looked as if someone had peed