Diary

This year began badly with the death of Alexander Chancellor, former editor of this magazine. He was the most fun of anyone I ever knew. Everyone at his funeral tried to describe his laugh and some even tried to imitate it, but with little success. It was as unique as the boom of the bittern. Explosive, volcanic, often involving quite a lot of spitting, it was also infectious: it was impossible to be glum in his company. Alexander liked to appear a dilettante, but as well as being a brilliant writer and editor, he was an excellent cook and a seriously good pianist. (He even briefly thought of making music his career.) He was also, of course, one of the last of the great lunchers.

Lunch with the great Sir Michael Howard, 95 last week. During a conversation about BBC1’s Howards End, he said: ‘I met Forster once, at a lunch party in London in 1943, given by Arthur Koestler, just before I went to Italy. We spoke much about Richard Hillary, then just beginning to be canonised. Forster suddenly turned to me and asked: “What do you think about sardines?” I was confounded, and have often since wished that I had produced some appropriately witty riposte.

Meghan Markle certainly knows how to impress the in-laws. She has announced that she and Prince Harry are going to devote much of their married life to the Commonwealth. And we all know how much the Commonwealth means to the Head of the Commonwealth. In this week’s interview to mark their engagement, the future princess mentioned it twice as she spoke of her ‘passion’ for all the ‘young people running around the Commonwealth’. The Prince himself is already plugged in to umpteen charities on this patch, not least the excellent Queen’s Young Leaders programme. It is all music to the ears of a monarch who, as a young princess herself, famously pledged ‘my whole life, whether it be long or short’ to this ‘family of nations’.

At the top of Machu Picchu last week, I saw two wide-winged condors swoop over Sacred Valley through a rainbow that curved between two holy mountains. Weary after many books and travels, I felt restored and inspired by this magic. There was hardly anyone in Machu Picchu; its cliffs vertiginous, its cloud jungle lushly impenetrable, it was discovered by outsiders only a century ago. Built as a royal estate and shrine by Inca conqueror Pachacutec around 1450, during our Wars of the Roses, no one knows when or why it was abandoned — because of Spanish conquest, or decades earlier due to civil war? Earlier I set out from Cusco, once the Inca capital, a holy city that in some ways reminded me of Jerusalem. Its Temple Mount was the Temple of the Sun, once gleaming in sheets of gold.

It’s remarkable how fast the unthinkable becomes the expected. It felt almost routine to pick up the New York Post last Sunday morning and see the front page mocked up as a wanted poster for Harvey Weinstein and the news that the NYPD is preparing to arrest him for alleged rape. Between the daily barrage of Trump’s lies and excesses and the sexual harassment tsunami, America has outrage overload. The result is that all the predations, political or sexual or both, come close to drowning each other out. Already Weinstein’s legal advocates are test-driving the theory that the Harvey ‘pile-on’ is really about Trump — that thwarted feminist fury at the serial sexual harasser in the Oval Office has flushed out a surrogate who’s even more gross.

New York, Philadelphia, Washington, Raleigh, Dallas… I’m on a book tour in Donald Trump’s USA, which feels much like the USA I’ve visited many times before. The tour doesn’t go to any of the so-called ‘rust belt’ cities where Trump has his main support and the people I meet are quietly shocked, apologetic — as if their President is an elderly relative who has displayed horrible manners at the table. Washington is such a handsome, classical city, with its free museums and wonderful collections of art, that I feel a stab of pain as I drive past the White House and think about the man inside.

I don’t know why party conferences no longer take place in Scarborough. As a child, I saw many an important politician strolling to the Spa Hall, including Winston Churchill. I am a Conservative party member but I have never been to conference. What would I do? Standing ovate, I suppose. But this year? Hm. Theresa May messed up bigger time than she may ever realise. My local association saw the writing on the wall before the polls closed. A panic email came in. ‘It’s going to be very tight.’ Tight indeed. Now, the government seems entirely focused on Brexit, and of course it is important, but there are many other matters to sort out and I don’t mean internecine squabbles. Poverty. Housing. Schools. Holes in the road.

I never expected to visit Iceland, let alone play cricket there. But the Iceland national team was off to play in the Pepsi Cup in Prague last week, against Hungary and Poland among others, and needed some easy meat to practise on. So the Authors XI found themselves in a vast indoor stadium in Reykjavik with artificial grass and a yellow ball, playing three 20-over games. The floodlights were dim and the ball swung prodigiously. When it bounced, it either stood up, stopped or hurried through low. The best word to describe batting conditions would be ‘difficult’. Our opening bowler, the novelist Nicholas Hogg, took four for seven in four overs. The Iceland team had one native Icelander and one Brit; the rest were from Sri Lanka or Pakistan.

September is my time of year. Summer is all very well if you’re one of those golden-haired, long-limbed types who looks heavenly in a sarong and a waist chain. But for me it’s just an endless battle against heat, direct sunlight, corpulence (chiefly my own) and biting insects. Besides, there’s nothing quite like that back-to-school feeling, the promise of a new term — and a chance to catch up with friends who have been off gallivanting all summer. Hence one of my favourite dates in our social calendar, an annual ‘end of summer’ party in Henley. It’s a bit of a schlep on a Saturday night, but always worth it, not least because the fish and chips are excellent and the hostess divine.

To the Business School at the University of Edinburgh to be interviewed on the theme of ‘Great Political Disasters’. Main criteria for inclusion: decisions, often taken for short-term reasons, whose unforeseen consequences have echoed down the ages. Everyone will have their own little list, but mine included the Balfour declaration, Partition, Suez, Wilson’s failure to devalue in 1964 (which haunted subsequent Labour governments), Denis Healey’s IMF loan in 1976 (which he later admitted had been unnecessary and which led to the Winter of Discontent and the election of Margaret Thatcher), the poll tax, Iraq and the Brexit referendum (yes, I realise that the jury is still out on that last one).

No sympathy from me for the Brits stuck in the European heatwave. I’ve never understood people who go abroad for their holidays at this time of year. OK, as this week shows, you’re not absolutely nailed on for sunshine back home. But it’s probably going to be at least pleasant, and certainly won’t tip over into the furnace-like conditions of Italy and Greece. Even France gets too hot. Why not stay and explore all those places in Britain you keep meaning to visit, and take your foreign sun in January, when you really need it? If funds or holiday allowance permit only one trip per year, copy the family I heard of whose summer break entailed getting out their passports, leaving them by the back door and walking into the garden where their sun-loungers awaited.

Diana Spencer has been dead for 20 years. I was a journalist on the Evening Standard in those days and she came to lunch at the newspaper a few months before she died. Apart from her blinding charm, and her overwhelming beauty, it was her perfect manners which were striking. She mastered a few details about anyone she met, so that they always felt she was interested in them. It is a great gift. I do not go in for meeting famous people, but that lunch was something very special. I went home in a blaze of love which has lasted to this hour. Conservative-minded people feared her because she wanted to upset the apple cart. She certainly did. It is strange that after she had done so, and there were bruised Granny Smiths all over the street, the monarchy was more popular than it had ever been.