DIARY
Last week for me was bitter-sweet. It began in the greenroom before the Frost programme, where Stephen Dorrell greet- ed me like a long-lost friend. We sat next to each other at breakfast, and after telling me that he was addicted to fried bread, an essential part of the great British breakfast that his predecessor as Secretary of State for Health, Virginia Bottomley, had tried to outlaw, he set about convincing me that he is a Eurosceptic.
Monday could have been a bitter day, as the most disparate crowd ever gathered together paid tribute to the late Terence Donovan. Terence, however, did not have a bitter bone in his body. A more positive person I have seldom met. If you had prob- lems Terence had practical solutions of the most imaginative kind. It is so hard to believe that he is dead. The aftermath of the serialisation of my memoirs, Once a Jolly Bagman, still swirled around. Lunch with Cecil Parkinson, of whom I wrote only good, was a jolly affair. Lunch with Cecil Parkinson always is a jolly affair. Julian Cfitchley's review of my memoirs was quite bitter — not, I hasten to add, because he wrote ill of me. A man who writes 'whatev- er one might think about Alistair, he can write beautifully' has a place close to my heart. I return the compliment to Sir Julian, but add that his diatribe against his former parents-in-law which takes up one third of the review was unnecessary. Sir Julian grumbles that they turned out to be poor Jews, not the rich Jews that he had taken them for when he married their eldest daughter. As his ex-father-in-law has been dead for some years, his ex-wife's stepmother is well into her 70s and his divorce took place 33 years ago, this piece of work could well be described as bitter.
S ince my defection from the Conserva- tive party to the Referendum party I have been attacked for 'deserting my friends'. In toy criticism of various politicians I have been accused of 'slagging off my friends'. John Junor, writing in the Mail on Sunday, feels particularly strongly about this. Heav- en knows why, for he has for years earned a fine living slagging off friend and foe alike, changing sides with a far greater frequency than the old bloke changes his shirts. It really all depends on your definition of friendship. Are your friends the people you work with? the people you regularly meet at dinners and cocktail parties? or are they the people who have made an impact on how you think and feel, and whom you care deeply about? The latter is the definition of how I judge my friends. I may well have mocked colleagues with whom I stopped ALISTAIR McALPINE working seven years ago, whose company I have never sought since and who, inciden- tally, have never since sought mine. I do not count these people as friends and I have never done so. My friendships tran- scend politics. For instance, I lunched last week with Cedric Price, an old friend of mine who feels that during the last 18 years of Conservative rule he has lived in an `occupied country'. My political views could not be more different from his, but that does not stop us being friends. It is a friendship where I would not utter a word against him, or he against me. In my book I mock politicians who are quite capable of fighting back, men and women whom I have criticised in public print for the last five years. Nowhere in my book will you find mockery of someone too small or too weak to defend themselves.
T
he week was filled with dinner parties. Dinner at Tessa Keswick's is always a grand affair, grand because in the best sense of the word Tessa is a grand hostess. A dinner where you have the proprietor of the Tele- graph Group sitting down with the editor of the Times, not to mention the editor of The `Things were very different back in the days of Labour. For a start, instead of electricity we had candles . . . ' Spectator, must surely be considered grand. The next night, dinner at the Garrick with my old friends Julia Langdon, Geoffrey Parkhouse, Ian Aitken and Stephen Fay. On Thursday I was up early waiting for The Spectator to hit the streets. I did not expect well of this magazine. The wily editor had sent a colleague to ask what those mocked `thought of it all'. Well, they didn't. Charles Powell, however, a man who might justifi- ably be upset that I had tried to persuade Margaret Thatcher to sack him, was in his review well disposed towards my book. The generosity of his last sentence I found deeply moving.
By chance in Jean-Paul Gaultier's shop I came across Tristan Garel-Jones. Happily we were both shopping for clothes for our wives: the mind boggles at the thought of either Tristan or myself in flowing black tulle wearing a ring through his nose, which is quite normal wear for men who shop there. Garel-Jones had replied to The Spec- tator's enquiries about his views on my book via his secretary with the words, 'Lord McAlpine is a very sad figure'. The milk of human kindness runs, however, in Garel- Jones's veins, for he tried to cheer me up with a lecture on the history of Europe, starting with Napoleon and ending with Major. The lecture lasted the best part of an hour. I do not want Garel-Jones to imagine that I am not grateful for this dis- course when I write that the level of states- manship seems to have dropped off a bit over the years between these two figures.
Sunday morning's papers brought incoming fire, two barrels of it, the first from Anthony Holden, known as Golden Holden when he was a close friend of Prince Charles and big in royal circles. Now, as result of a book about the Prince which broke many confidences, he has been cast into outer darkness. He appears to believe that I infiltrated the Conservative party in 1975 to do exactly the same thing 22 years later and that, as a consequence, I should suffer the same fate. As a writer, his best work is a book on poker. The second blast was from David Mellor and contained a small gem. I quote: 'He [McAlpine] goes on to assert that Major's wisdom tooth problem was a fraud. It wasn't, as I know from being in constant contact at the time.' How strange that, at that painful time, John Major could speak to Margaret Thatcher's declared enemies but not to her declared friends. Mellor ends the review with the words, 'How the mighty are fallen.' Does he refer to me or his own trip from Minis- ter of the Crown to disc jockey? I am con- fused.
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