It was very gratifying to see the piece, which I had already posted in embryonic form on this site, make it into commercial print (see Report 18), but it was also an example of how difficult and unsatisfactory freelance journalism can be. (And, incidentally, how infuriating are all those ads for organisations which try to sell their wares under the guise of suggesting that ‘anyone’ can make a decent living from freelance writing). I originally wrote the article entirely ‘on spec’ for no better reason than that I had recently spent time with Stanley, whom I have known for over forty years, but feeling that it deserved an audience I submitted it to the Telegraph. My contact there turned it down, courteously, on the grounds that they were ‘Johnsonned out’. I thought this was a bit ripe coming from the major Fleet Street Johnson employer but never mind. I then sent it to another contact at the Daily Mail and got no response. After a while I pulled rank and wrote to Paul Dacre, with whom I worked a lifetime ago on the Daily Express. He, with a good old hack’s eye for a story, was interested enough to pass it to his Features Desk and, with a few additions, it appeared as a timely aside to the various breaking stories about Boris’ sex life and sacking.

So, a happy result, as far as I was concerned but the piece might just as well never have made it off this site. The episode not only confirms my view that it’s tough out here for the freelance journalist but also my ever-growing belief that editorial judgements are very poor and responses, with some honourable exceptions, increasingly slovenly and unprofessional.

Anyway it’s been an exciting not to say exotic few weeks. Both the foreign trips I have been anticipating keenly while fearing they would never materialise did finally come off. The first was a brief stay in Venice at the gorgeous Londra Palace which is newly represented by my old friend Michael Blanchard, or more accurately by his colleagues James and Rebecca at Michael Blanchard Associates. Penny and I went armed with that excellent and erudite guide, “Venice for Pleasure” by J.G. Links first published by the Bodley Head in 1966. To my horror I realise that this year is the centenary of Links’ birth. I say ‘horror’ because once upon a time I knew Links and interviewed him for Bill Deedes’ Daily Telegraph. Although I had no firm commissions I wrote a piece based on this visit and dedicated to the memory of a fascinating man and his inimitable work. So far it’s been turned down by Country Life so I have sent it off to poor Paul Dacre. If, as I fear, I am unable to sell it I’ll post it on this site in time for Christmas. It will be a pity if no-one takes it because at the risk of seeming immodest I know that it’s interesting and unusual.

On the way home we spent a night at another Blanchard Hotel, Great Fosters, near Egham, a convenient distance from Heathrow. It’s an extraordinary Elizabethan Manor House not unlike John Paul Getty’s nearby palace, Sutton Place. We had an absolutely ginornmous room and I will try to place a mention of it somewhere or other, perhaps in the new travel magazine (which alas has still to happen and of which more later).

The other foreign travel was a Jeffrey Rayner expedition to the Leeward Islands. I have been going on foreign trips with Jeffrey since my first wife and I spent a happy fortnight in Calabria back in the early seventies. One of Jeffrey’s present clients is the “Star Clipper” line and this particular jolly involved a flight to the Caribbean island of St. Maarten (St. Martin to the French who own the half of the place that doesn’t include the airport!) followed by a sail round the Leeward Islands in the eponymous clipper, a beautiful four-masted barquentine about which I have already written for the Independent on Sunday and Country Life. As always with Jeffrey, the company was entertaining and convivial, the destinations were exotic, and the comforts considerable. The first piece is half-complete though I’m not entirely certain where to send it. Although I have every intention of placing it with some newspaper or magazine I may well post it up here along with the Venetian essay in time for Christmas – which we’re intending to spend in Avignon thanks to a miraculously cheap deal available from SNCF (£59 return to Paris and only £19 from there to absolutely anywhere in the whole of France.)

You might think this constituted enough activity for the last few weeks but there have been other excitements as well. By far the most enjoyable was a visit from my daughter Emma and her eighteen-month old son Leonel, otherwise known for esoteric familial reasons, as “The Financial Adviser”. They were both on terrific form though understandably jet-lagged as the result of their flight from Miami – and not exactly looking forward to flying on to Mexico a few days later to join up with Leonel, my son-in-law. We spent happy hours sitting outside the yacht club drinking white wine (not the FA) and eating pork crackling. It’s a salutary fact that of my four children only Alexander is living in England – Emma is in Miami, Lucy in Auckland and Tristram last heard of somewhere in Bolivia. Such is modern life!

Meanwhile I am plugging away with the various book projects and return to Windsor Castle shortly for another trawl through the papers of Princess Margaret. The next whodunit “A Death on the Ocean Wave” has been making rather desultory progress but the good news is that Sara Paretsky, the great American crime writer, has come up with a wonderful encomium for “Death and the Visiting Fellow” (“How wonderful to have Tim Heald back in print!”) and my loyal local friends at Bookends of Fowey and the Marina Hotel (see links for websites!) have agreed to combine on a launch party for “Death and the Durbervilles” which is to be published by Hale on March 31^st next year. Another case for watching this space.

This occasion will also be a platform for discussing the Bookends part of the programme for the Du Maurier Festival. Yes, I’m afraid I am performing again, this time with a chat on “Royalty and Royalties” with special reference, naturally, to Princess Margaret. The Festival is in May and that is going to be a busy time too because immediately before I am speaking at a charity lunch at the House of Lords and then immediately afterwards we fly off to South Australia where I am to be the guest speaker at the President’s lunch at the great Cornish Festival, Kernewek Lowender, in Wallaroo. There’s posh!