My friend the failure – and the star
‘Altogether Elsewhere.’ The title page of an unpublished travel book caught my eye during a recent clear-out. The author, Matthew Leeming, was a character who deserved to be famous but somehow never made it. He was imaginative, witty, fearless and greedy – wonderfully greedy. He inherited his father’s ceramics company and ran it for years with great success. He loved being rich. ‘Money,’ he used to say wistfully, ‘eases the pain of being alive.’ To pique women’s interest, he claimed to be off-limits. ‘I’m training for the Catholic priesthood,’ he confided He invented businesses out of thin air.
