I hope I live long enough to see an explanatory note at the end of reviews – ‘This author ran off with my wife’; ‘I wanted to write this book but my publisher cancelled my contract.’
So I think it is only fair to declare my hand. I have known Tina Brown since 1979, and she was kind enough to give me a sumptuous dinner on my recent visit to New York, the table filled with fascinating movers and shakers.
In 1981, I detect that the unctuous Kenneth Rose, the journalist and diarist, was faced with a similar dilemma when asked to review a life of the Queen Mother by Elizabeth Longford – for he lunched from time to time with the Longfords in the
