The Telegraph

Dante’s Beach, Ravenna The other day the Telegraph launched a daily newsletter called ‘Characters’ about its remarkably popular obituaries column. Announcing the initiative, the obits editor, Andrew Brown, singled out for praise in the ‘lovable rogues’ category Maurizio ‘Zanza’ Zanfanti, the Rimini Romeo, who slept, it is reliably said, with 6,000 women. Zanza – short for zanzara, Italian for mosquito – was the most famous Latin lover of the Italian package holiday boom times during the 1970s and 1980s, whose epicentre was Rimini, just down the Adriatic coast from me. He died, aged 62, in 2018. I was pretty chuffed because, although Telegraph obits are unsigned, I was the author.

Writing this Diary and the amiable correspondence I have had recently with my old friend Mathias Döpfner as he assumes control of the Telegraph titles remind me of how much more agreeably simple my days are now than when I was Telegraph chairman. Thanks to the internet, my reflections on a number of outlets in different countries ricochet all around the world to an astounding number of people.

Home John Healey, the Defence Secretary, visited Cyprus after criticism of Britain’s response to drone attacks on the RAF base there. The Cyprus High Commissioner said: ‘The people are disappointed, the people are scared, the people could expect more.’ The destroyer HMS Dragon sailed for Cyprus from Portsmouth on 10 March. Rachel Reeves, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, told the Commons that inflation was likely to rise; the Office for Budget Responsibility estimated an extra percentage point increase on prices by the end of the year. The Prince of Wales aircraft carrier would not head for the Middle East. President Trump of America said: ‘That’s OK, Prime Minister Starmer… We don’t need people that join Wars after we’ve already won!

This is a two-parter, albeit linked. If you’re interested in the duplicitousness of British journalists, then keep reading. If you’re only interested in self-destructive British tax policy, skip to the middle. Burnt repeatedly by hacks who pretend to be enraptured by my latest novel while snooping through my cupboards, I long ago learned the hard way not to let British journalists into my home. Thus for years I only conducted interviews in the safely impersonal lobby of a West End hotel. But lessons learned are too often lessons lost. That may be an overly kind formulation of: I am an idiot. In my new hang in Portugal, I reverted to gormless naivety last month and let a British journalist into my house.