T he Reform Club in Pall Mall, which I have belonged
to for nearly 50 years, is cheap and gemntlich — as Queen Victoria, who presides, would have said — and is where Laura and I stay on our visits to London. `Bed-tea', as it is called in the East, is served in the 19thcentury rooms, and plump haddock for breakfast — even at weekends, when the club is closed.
We can cross the Channel by air, car ferry or train; with an ever-so-slight disability, the last can be ameliorated by a wheelchair. This service also saves a porter, were such a functionary to exist, and is free. You can tip the English pushers, but not the French.
Ihad to spend a week in London for the launching of my autobiography Jew Made in England — a beano in the library of the Reform Club for 250-plus (not my idea), signings at bookshops, interview with the Jewish Chronicle, presence on Libby Purves's Midweek and why not take in the V&A, the Hayward, Tate Modern and drop in at Doughty Street, my old offices, in the hope of a book to review? Moira Pollack's (née Lister) offer of a room in her Kensington bower appealed.
My publishers, Timewell Press of... (there are no offices, just an email, a fax and a mobile), consisted for years of Mr G. Noel until I introduced him to Andreas Campomar, half-German and half-Uruguayan and wholly Wykehamist, whom I had met at Simon Raven's funeral. Andreas became my editor and Timewell's vizier and sold serial rights to the Sunday Times and extracts to Saga magazine. Mr G. said we might sell 50 copies. They Volvo'd advance copies of The Jew, as we were beginning to call it, around London and delivered finished copies to the posh bookshops, which were not put off by the rather celestial price of L20 or the title, the inspiration of our adopted Sri Lankan son, Ajith. But as the West Country rep pointed out, there is only one synagogue west of Bristol. In fact there is only one Jew in the book, George Hayim, which means, does it not, 'lover of men'.
rr he first to arrive at the party at the Reform was Robert Kee, handsome at 85. An intimate of Frances Partridge, who died the other day at 103, he confirmed my story, which The Spectator's reviewer Mr Taylor thought 'vertiginous', of her ringing up Harrods and ordering them to collect the body of her son Burgo — who had just died while on the telephone to my then wife — and to cremate it and send her the bill. 'Very like her,' said Robert.
TheYcame. The Sussmans from South Africa; the Markses; Dame Simone Prendergast; contemporaries of more than 60 years ago from Eton and New Coll. like Edward Montagu and John Julius Norwich; people we had only just met like Frances Cairncross; Rupert Sheldrake, the writer of whom I am most proud; Cressida Lindsay from Norwich and our son Aaron from the Perigord. Naim Attallah bought ten copies. Andreas had dug out Bryan Kneale RA, whose portrait of me, painted in 1954 and exhibited in the Academy in that year, is on the cover. I must have signed nearly 200 copies because Andreas, the efficient one, 'banked' £2,000-odd the next day. Marilyn Warnick, the book lady at the Mail on Sunday, one of many former Naim nymphs attending, declared she had never seen such a launch. That said, The Jew is unlikely ever to become a bestseller, lacking the famous author, e.g., David Niven, or the crucial
ingredients decreed by Harold Robbins of money, sex and violence.
Aneighbour in the Limousin, the painter Robert Rightman, also a yachtie, told me Libby Purves had a 36 Biscay which she sailed round the British Isles. My knowing this shook her slightly, I think (a technique of Jimmy Goldsmith's; research the researchers). Her other guests on Midweek were the chaplain of the Stock Exchange, who was wonderfully 'high', even up to the Tridentine Mass, would you believe, but not at all camp, and Holly, a buxom, bouncing lady demolitionist with a tumble of blond hair, also from Leeds. The fourth, the seasoned traveller William Dalrymple, never rolled up; he had to come all the way from Chiswick and was traffic-jammed in a hangover from the Tube strike.
In the Green Room, Holly explained that the Twin Towers collapsed because the architects, in their obsession for space and light, had neglected the concrete core of the elevator shafts which holds such high buildings together. She should know; she blows them down — one should never say `up'. Having looked at the towers for over two years from our loft in Greenwich Village, I began to dislike them, and believe the site should be used not for another 1,776 feet of temple to Mammon but a temple to God — anybody's God.
The broadcast must have been quite effective, because a man called Peter Jones rang up for a copy of my book, saying he had made 15 calls to get Timewell's number. Mr G. himself answered the call and immediately started wrapping up a book. 'He's sending a cheque — of course he will.' Not the sort of service you get at Random House.
T aura's grandmother was a McEwen Land that family and the Heskeths are intertwined and philoprogenitive, so I schlepped to cocktails given by Christian, Dowager Lady Hesketh, née McEwen, to launch the second novel by Helena McEwen (Bloomsbury), from whom I had bought a Turneresque view of the Thames when she was at the Royal College a few years ago. Kisty's two enormous sons were present and the Lord told me he might find a buyer for his house Easton Neston — suggested price £50 million — from one of the new Russian Jewish billionaires, London being so handy for Moscow.
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