He is, again in his own words, a ‘word-magician in velve’ (a reference to his beloved velvet jacket, or ‘jacky-jack’ as he sometimes calls it). He has admitted me into his magical circle of brilliant intellectuals like legendary écriviste Anthony Holden, the funny, flirtatious Clive James (whose TV criticism is an art form in itself) and that doyen of wicked wordplay, Robert Robinson. Sometimes Cyril Fletcher, the éminence grise of television’s fabled That’s Life, graces us with his presence, and, urging us all to ‘Pin back your lug ’oles,’ brings the table to its feet with one of his immortal ‘Odd Odes’.
Martin is working at the TLS, and sometimes sends me love letters he has written on TLS notepaper. ‘I love you Martin’ he once wrote. I remember mentioning that he must have left out a dash between the ‘you’ and the ‘Martin’, but he denied it. Is he in love with someone else?
JULIE KAVANAGH
I’m warming my slippers in front of the log fire when I turn to my wife. ‘There’s a funny sort of ringing in my ears,’ I complain.
‘It’s the telephone, Dukey,’ she explains.
She passes me the receiver. Someone is talking on the other end.
It’s the Home Secretary. Douglas Hurd is my godson, and still runs the occasional errand for me.
‘Oh, Dukey, how would you like to be in charge of the BBC?’ he asks.
‘BBC?’ I say. ‘…Remind me.’
‘Broadcasting. Radio, telly, that sort of hoodjamaflip.’
‘To be perfectly frank, Douglas,’ I say, ‘I’ve got no use for a telly. I mean, where would one put it?’
‘But you don’t have to buy a television, Dukey – you just have to be in charge of it.’
‘You’ve convinced me,’ I say, and go to sleep.
MARMADUKE HUSSEY
February 25th
I’ll never forget something the great Laurens van der Post* once told me. Things, he said, are as they are. Yet being what they are, they are also somehow different. And if things were not as they are, they could not continue to be what they both have been and will be. And consequently, they – the things in question – will always be not only what they might have been and what they are, but also what they will be. It is these simple truths that we are, I fear, in danger of losing.
HRH THE PRINCE OF WALES
February 26th
I am halfway through Tess of the D’Urbervilles when I throw it away in disgust. Thomas Hardy had no right – no right whatsoever – to write a book about me without my express permission. His presumption in this matter represents a total invasion of my rights to privacy. May I also point out that, like many a hack before him, he has got a startling number of the facts wrong.
FACT: I was born in Australia, not Wessex.
FACT: I was christened Germaine, not Tess, a name I have long despised. Has the guy never considered checking his facts?
FACT: I was never impregnated by a guy called Alec.
FACT: I have never – I repeat NEVER – been arrested and hanged.
GERMAINE GREER
February 27th
I peel the onion of my memory, first one layer, then another, and then assuredly another, when suddenly buried deep in it I espy the glint of something unexpected, namely something I had not expected to espy therein.
At first I can make out the shape distantly only, but then I realise that it is – oh yes! oh no! oh yes! oh no! – a hat, quite military, initialled with two distinctive letters, both the same. The first is S and so is the second. SS.
My goodness, the hat in question is undeniably an SS helmet, and at that moment I recall with a start that I was, unbeknownst to me, a member of the SS, an organisation that had done uncalled-for things but so very many years ago that it is most extremely hard to remember without forgetting.
GÜNTER GRASS
Picasso’s attitude to boiled sweets has been the subject of much debate. His preference, some say, was for Barley Sugar, whilst others maintain he preferred the old-fashioned ‘gob-stopper’.
One or two, including the meretricious Clive Bell, have even suggested he enjoyed Liquorice All-Sorts. Such a claim flies in the face of reason, since experts have proved that the Liquorice All-Sort has never counted as a boiled sweet. For one thing, it is far too chewy, but these stupid people – among them the pushy Clive Bell, who had no knowledge of boiled sweets whatsoever – couldn’t be expected to know that.
Did Picasso ever include a boiled sweet in a painting? Received wisdom suggests that his Weeping Woman II (1936) is seeking comfort from a throat lozenge. Others point to the figure on the right in his Bathers Outside a Beach Cabana (1929) and say that her transparent sense of Weltschmerz is caused by the bubble-gum that may have enlodged itself in her tresses. And then there will always be those who maintain that the gentleman’s erect member painted as a circle in Seated Male Nude (1927) is in fact a Polo Mint.
JOHN RICHARDSON *
News comes through of the death of Harold Acton. For me, no man was less like the area of London associated with his name. To be linked with that most unprepossessing part of West London must have been a matter of perpetual ignominy for poor, dear Harold.
DIANA MOSLEY
Today was the day of my funeral, which was so great. I came in a hearse ($154) in this beautiful open coffin in a black cashmere suit ($374) and sunglasses ($56) and the church was full of people like Diane von Furstenberg and Liza and Calvin Klein and Yoko and Bianca and Robert Mapplethorpe and just about everybody, they all showed up and everyone was saying how great I was looking and how I’ve never looked better which was really great, and my blood pressure’s right down which is great. Liza’s put on weight though, and I spotted Calvin’s got a pimple on his nose and everyone could tell he was embarrassed about it. Afterwards, I was buried in Pittsburgh, so totally depressing.
ANDY WARHOL
February 28th
One of the key things I’ve uncovered during my research is that Victoria became Queen of England at a very young age – and managed to remain Queen all the time until she died! And as a Duchess myself, I feel I have a duty to let the rest of the world into this truly extraordinary secret which has been kept undercover for a century, which is nearly a thousand years.
Instead of a childhood filled with the bestest kind of great big huggy-hugs, the young Victoria had to cope with a starchy, no-can-do, hands-off atmosphere of stuffy, po-faced courtiers telling her do this, don’t do that: no, you can’t get your rocks off with all the hunkiest blokes on the disco floor of Kensington Palace; no, you can’t have a bit of fun going skinny-dipping in the Balmoral pond