T o Venice for the opening of François Pinault’s museum in
the Palazzo Grassi, now showing part of his extraordinary modern art collection. For some reason France rejected the collection, saying that there was no suitable venue. Some say it was a wise decision. The Palazzo Grassi is ideal, though what its original owners would have thought of such exhibits as the pulsating life-size pink latex pig is debatable. However, connoisseurs are agreed that the collection is the most comprehensive survey of modern art from the past 50 years and that Venice is blessed. I am far too ignorant to judge the artistic value of sliced cows floating in formaldehyde to wax knowledgable about the merits of such exhibits.
In the evening Mr Pinault generously invited 800 guests to a seated dinner in the Arsenale, a huge cavernous building where the Serene Republic built her mighty fleets. Dinner was outstanding, as were the wines and champagne from the Pinault domaine. Each table centre held a mini sugar-frosted cypress tree. Others were suspended from the rafters, glowing as if under a hazy moon.
Next day we flew with friends to Nizhny Novgorod to board a splendid steamer on the Volga accompanied by the 100-strong Russian National Orchestra of which my husband is patron. In glorious spring sunshine we sailed slowly along, serenaded by sublime music. We disembarked at a series of monasteries for concerts, always met by the bishop and brightly costumed girls offering traditional bread and salt. Our goal was the ancient town of Kostroma, home of the first Romanov, Tsar Michael, crowned in 1613. It was there at the Ipatiev Monastery months previously that, following some dozen toasts of vodka, my husband found himself promising to replace the monastery’s largest bell, which had been destroyed by the Bolsheviks. We had now returned with a number of kind sponsor friends to attend the inauguration. The giant bell was caged a foot off the ground so we could each admire our names — which were engraved around its circumference — and ring it for luck. With the striker swinging, I was handed the rope and found myself hurtling towards the bell — but, happily, I was caught just before impact by anxious black-robed monks. I am not sure which is more fraught with danger, christening a ship or a monastery’s bell.
While on the Volga we missed the televised expedition our son undertook in the Andes which recreated the harrowing journey made by two of the Uruguayan rugby team, survivors of a plane crash in 1972. Many were injured and some killed, and once their food ran out they resorted to eating their dead compatriots. When rescue did not come after almost eight weeks, the two set out to find help. Their fortnight’s struggle to climb over the top of the Andes and into Chile without proper clothing and in numbing cold must rate as a great example of raw courage. A book and a film of their adventures has already been made, but for the first time their exact route was being followed. Freddie expressed his anxiety about this adventure to us but his sangfroid when facing the combined difficulties of altitude sickness, tough climbing, freezing cold and a diet of raw meat (beef!) impressed us. I had heard that public school prepares boys for the hardships of life and now I believe it. A cousin of my husband’s told us that, having attended public school, he had little difficulty surviving Colditz. Times have changed and the boys now have hot water and even heating, but still ....
If one child was terrifying us with his adventures in the Andes, the other was in Tehran and has happily just returned after six months travelling in Muslim countries, researching a book. Our daughter is six foot tall and very blonde, so she did not pass unnoticed in Syria during the riots, or the Lebanon, or the Yemen, Saudi Arabia and Iran. My husband and I went to Iran in September 1978 on our honeymoon and were the Shah’s last foreign guests. Ella’s circumstances were somewhat different and she met nothing but kindness, whereas we had fists shaken at us as we passed (with darkened windows) in the official car. After spending so long in Muslim countries, she found the people she met in Iran were far more relaxed than anywhere else she had been. Contrary to recent popular opinion, she was surprised by how completely open they were in their conversations, unlike the very guarded replies she had received elsewhere.
Moving house is a stressful business often as stressful as a death in the family or a divorce. Well, we are in the middle of it, though some of the contents of our beloved country house in Gloucestershire will provide the necessary contents for Ella’s first flat in London. As she is an aspiring writer, I have given her my greatest treasure — my huge writing table. I have warned her that promoting one’s book is even harder than writing it — endlessly telling one’s audience the story of the last book when you have moved on to another subject, occasionally mixing them up. I am going to take my young writer-daughter to Hay-on-Wye when I sign my books. We’ll be wearing our wellies at this jolly annual literary festival, which I have been told has even more mud than Glastonbury.
HRH Princess Michael of Kent was recently awarded Le Prix Histoire in France for her book The Serpent and the Moon. Her latest history, Cupid and the King (Simon & Schuster, £10.99), is published on 5 June.
Previous page
