Nigel Jones

To meet one winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature would be seen by most bookish nerds like me as a real privilege; to meet two as extraordinarily lucky; but to enjoy extended encounters with three is surely very heaven. Such, however, has been my fortunate fate. The Nobel Prize for Literature is the world's most prestigious – and, as it comes with a hefty cash bonus, the second most lucrative – award for fine writing. Inaugurated at the dawn of the 20th century by the Swedish industrialist and inventor of dynamite, Alfred Nobel (to atone for a lifetime manufacturing munitions) the prize is one of five awarded annually every autumn by the Swedish Academy. The others are for physics, chemistry, medicine and – most controversially – peace.

This is a complex tale involving an American murder, the popular British TV series Flipper, and the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche – but bear with me. Next month sees the centenary of the conviction of two spoiled Chicago boys – Nathan Leopold, 19, and Richard Loeb, 18 – who admitted carrying out what the press at the time dubbed the ‘crime of the century’.  I had always sensed that my friend had a dark side and that he kept parts of his life secret from me The two student friends were sentenced to life imprisonment for murder, plus 99 years in jail for abduction, after admitting kidnapping and killing a 14-year-old boy, Bobby Franks, before mutilating his body with acid to disguise his identity.

As a confirmed critic of modern tattoos, who sounded off in these very pages about the ugly plague of body tats infesting our streets, I might be expected to disapprove of the latest manifestation of the fashion – the habit of many athletes taking part in the Paris Olympics to adorn themselves with the distinctive five interlocking rings of the Games’ logo: what I’m calling the ‘champ stamp’. In fact, the athletes have such beautiful bodies – young, toned and fit – and the rings themselves have such a pleasing symmetry that I can only approve and applaud the discreet addition of the logo to their rippling musculatures.

Summer is the season most associated with the enjoyment of life. It’s when people forget their cares, down tools, and head for the beach to enjoy sunny days and sexy nights. That’s how it was for me anyway until I came close to life’s polar opposite – barely surviving two close brushes with death. So for me summers are now indelibly associated with a sudden end that I twice narrowly escaped. Tearing off my soaking shirt, I stood bare-chested in the rain, feeling the same sense of mingled relief and ecstasy as if I were Caesar The first close encounter with Mr Death came in the Dordogne. My wife, daughter, and I had hired a horse-drawn caravan to explore the highways and byways of that enchanting province.

I blame Brexit. In the aftermath of the 2016 referendum, when the whole nation was still in the throes of a collective nervous breakdown, I succumbed to the prevailing mood of madness and went on a TV dating programme. No, it wasn’t Naked Attraction, the Channel 4 show in which participants strip down to reveal all to their prospective partners, but a rather more restrained show on the same channel called First Dates. I hadn’t actually even seen the programme when I noticed an ad in The Spectator appealing for single middle-aged people. I chose a Dover sole, which was an error as I was filmed plucking fishbones from my teeth My 18-year relationship had recently ended, I had moved to a new town, and like Britain freeing itself from the EU, I felt ready for a fresh beginning.

Rishi Sunak devoted part of the last day of his doomed premiership to meeting Becky Holt, Britain’s most tattooed mother, on ITV’s This Morning show. Ms Holt was clad in a bikini which revealed much of the 95 per cent of her body surface that is covered in tattoos. After the brief encounter, she told OK magazine that the PM had been ‘really, really polite’ and had merely inquired how much her tattoos had cost. I once had a close encounter with a woman who had her last lover’s birth sign tattooed in a very intimate spot During the 20th century and earlier, British tattoos were largely confined to sailors who had acquired them in foreign ports.

Anyone visiting the small Westphalian city of Münster in north-west Germany may notice three man-sized cages hanging from the handsome St Lambert’s Roman Catholic Church in the city’s main square, the Prinzipalmarkt, and wonder about their provenance. The cages are one of the last visible relics of an episode in which society took leave of its collective senses and went quite mad. It is my impression that the western world is currently undergoing just such a convulsion.

I had always been interested in politics but had not done anything practical until the rise of Nigel Farage’s Ukip. He was proving a thorn in the side of David Cameron in 2013, which attracted my admiring attention, so I decided to try and get involved. Despite having done my bit for European unity by fathering a half-French daughter and a half-Austrian son, I had always been fundamentally hostile to the EU – an artificial and undemocratic structure inimical to British interests and traditions – so it seemed obvious that Ukip was the party for me. A large poster of me was defaced with a Hitler moustache – an episode I found deeply humiliating I was summoned to a hotel in Gillingham, Kent, for a test to see if I was suitable for the approved list of Ukip candidates.

My son and various well-meaning friends have been advising me to abandon writing history books and cash in on the trend for boarding school misery memoirs. On the face of it, as someone who was sent away aged seven and remained in these institutions until I was 18, I am well qualified to add my contribution to what has now become a recognised sub-genre of English literature. My problem, though, is that I quite enjoyed my time at boarding schools and I cannot claim – as so many do – that it adversely affected my life; rather the reverse. In his extended essay ‘Such, such were the joys’, George Orwell recorded his awful schooldays at St Cyprians, a snobbish boys preparatory school in Eastbourne.