REPORT 58 JULY 2007
Tim's more or less monthly blog since May 2003
Rump steak and King George Whiting were no longer on the menu. . .
The Princess Margaret biography finally appeared and I’m in Australia.
The two events are not really connected but they could be taken the
wrong way I suppose! “Royal biographer flees down under to
escape wrath of Princess’s friends”. Or something like that. Not so,
but one could hardly be further away and reviews in London newspapers
don’t have quite the same impact in Sydney as they would if I were
still at home.
On the Saturday – it seems an age ago –they decanted us at our
temporary home. This is the old gatehouse for St. John’s College which
is a wonderful eccentric Gothic complex complete with tower, hall and
chapel. Evidently the first Roman Catholic College built anywhere
since the Reformation. It’s on the busy Parammatta Road opposite one
of the city’s smartest brothels. First we had mass in chapel with lots
of bobbing up and down and incense, then dinner in hall with Latin
graces, gowns, ritual songs and heaven knows what else. It is all
quite strange and more Hogwort-Oxbridge than the originals could
possibly be.
Inevitably, I suppose, publication now seems light years away. The
Daily Mail ran four extracts concentrating, of course, on
Townsend, Snowdon and Roddy Llewellyn as well as emphasizing that she
smoked and drank. It was fine. Some people felt it was
over-sensationalised but my feeling is that serialization is much like
having books adapted for film or TV. It’s different and you have to
wash your hands and enjoy the experience as best you can. I enjoy the
understated details in the book but I quite understand that they don’t
make headlines and sell newspapers.
I was in London for the actual day of publication but Lisa Shakespeare
was away that day and the following one so although a colleague was
supposed to field queries it all felt a bit chaotic compared with past
experiences. The only firm commitments I had were a radio interview
over the phone with Radio Europe in Malaga (a million listeners so not
the Micky Mouse operation you might imagine) and an appearance at the
Chichester Festival in the former kitchen at the Bishop’s Palace. Both
went off quite smoothly I thought, the latter much enhanced by the
presence of two old friends, Nigel Sitwell and Russell Twisk. I used
to work for Russell at the Radio Times and later when he was
editor in chief at Reader’s Digest. I stayed the night with him
and his wife near Chichester and we went to the last night of the
Rogers and Hart Musical at the theatre in Chichester. It was
spectacular with wonderful tap-dancing, a bravura cameo from Lorna
Lifts who must be fed up with being described as Judy Garland’s
daughter, and a terrific ‘home’audience.
On the Sunday night I had very enjoyable Malay meal with the two sons
and Kirsten, Alexander’s wife. The following morning I was interviewed
on ITV by Fern Britton and Philip Scofield. I really enjoyed this and
did OK I thought. It was much better than previous TV experiences
which have always seemed to be over in the bat of an eyelid. My main
memory of TV is being eclipsed one breakfast-time by the Incredible
Hulk! Anyway this was all immensely professional and for the solitary
writer an unusual opportunity to take part in an extraordinary team
performance. There seemed to be so many people involved but they all
appeared to know what they were doing and my interviewers managed to
give the impression they had actually read the book. By no means the
norm. They were also scrupulous about holding it up to camera and
saying it was available in all good bookshops. So many thanks all
round.
The only heart-stopper was actually getting it fixed. Up. As I was
scooting round London I was incommunicado much of the time and the
first I knew that ITV was trying to get old of me was when an official
at the London Library came bursting into the basement where they keep
back numbers of the Times and where I was researching Douglas
Jardine’s cricket tour of India in 1933 and 4. Penny had been back to
the Army and Navy Club and fielded a message from Weidenfeld but it
was touch and go. There was also a window display in Hatchards in
Piccadilly which was great but again although I was able to sign all
their stock it was only because I went in to say hello. The moral is,
I suppose, that you must push yourself forward. I confess I thought of
Jeffrey Archer and winced.
Anyway, on the Monday I found myself sitting in an amazing club class
seat/bed aboard a Qantas flight to Adelaide via Singapore, sipping a
glass of champagne and thinking that life was pretty all right really.
Smug so-and-so. I actually managed to sleep quite well on the long
flight to Singapore, even changing in to the pyjamas provided by
Qantas. There was a rather irritating wait of several hours in
Singapore before catching the connection to Adelaide which was
mercifully direct unlike the last time when the plane stopped in
Darwin and we all had to get out and clear customs. The non-stop made
quite a difference.
In Adelaide I checked in to the Hyatt and Penny and I had lunch at the
Adelaide Club with old friends, Jack and Jill, who had been staying
with us in Cornwall only a few days earlier. Lunch at the wonderfully
old-fashioned club has become something of a ritual though we were sad
that our favourite Maltese waiter, Val, had gone home to Valletta and
also that rump steak and King George Whiting were no longer on the
menu. They had become part of the ritual but apparently beef prices
have rocketed and the KG Whiting is all but fished out.
The following day we were driven up to the Barossa for a long-planned
Stone Wall lunch at the Rockford winery about which I have written for
the Spectator. I’ve now delivered the article and Sarah
Standing who edits the relevant pages says it sounded AMAZING!!!! (The
capital letters and ‘screamers’ are hers so I hope that before too
long you’ll be able to read it there).
I digress but some reviews of the Princess book have come in from
London. They all seem pretty good but if I might be allowed a
thoughtful note (what else is a blog for?) I can’t help noticing that
there is an understandable tendency to review the subject rather than
the book. In other words people are inclined to bang on with their
views on Princess Margaret rather than what I’ve said about her. There
have been some good unsolicited messages on the internet, notably one
from my friend the crime-writer Margaret Yorke and from a new hitherto
unknown fan in Ohio. I was mildly irritated by the Dominic Sandbrook
piece in the Standard which came out very (too?) fast and
managed to render the sub-heading “A life unrivalled” rather than ”a
life unravelled” which was the correct version. And there was a
stinker from Craig Brown. I was sad about this because I like his
stuff and he had been nice about my Prince Philip. I wonder if we made
a psychological error in quoting from his Philip review on the back of
the new one. The other encomia were from Barbara Cartland and Richard
Cobb both alas now dead and from Bill Deedes who at ninety plus seems
to be understandably pretty close to being hors de combat. Of course
there is the uncomfortable thought that Brown may just have disliked
the book but there was a gratuitously grouchy air about what he wrote
which made me think there was some hidden agenda. Not that, being so
far away perhaps, I seem to care particularly! But I’d have liked him
to have liked it.
Anyway, back to the Barossa and the AMAZING banquet at Rockford. It
really was everything for which we had hoped. The following day we
boarded the Indian-Pacific train for the overnight trip to Sydney. A
few years earlier we had taken the same train from Perth to Adelaide
so we knew what to expect – club car, dining car, sleeper – all
perfectly nice and comfortable but pretty old rolling stock and very
much a tourist train. Last time we had travelled with a large group of
Japanese but this time it was mainly retired Australians. They were
friendly and charming and we sat at mealtimes with a very interesting
and agreeable school-teaching couple from Toowoomba. However the train
lacked the buzz of a working, business journey which I hope we’ll get
between London and Berlin next month. And the track between Broken
Hill and Parkes about which we’d been forewarned was quite
fantastically bumpy. Also freakish rains meant we were two hours
behind schedule at Broken Hill and weren’t able to do the city tour
we’d planned. Pity.
Our friends Rick and Judy were waiting for us at Sydney Central which
seemed a bit sad and deserted but they whisked us off to their
fabulous house at Palm Beach up north and within an hour so we were
having hot drinks at a café by the beach on a crisp clear winter’s
morning and feeling pretty pleased with life.
We spent the first few days with the Lees, first at Palm Beach which
they are about to knock down and rebuild (they love the waterfront
setting but not the house), their town house in Paddington and their
lavender farm north of St. Albans about two hours out of the Sydney
across the Hawkesbury River (using Wiseman’s Ferry) and in a
dirt-track-roaded, often flooded, forested “Forgotten Valley”. This
was the ultimate chill-out place and completely wonderful. I read an
entire novel based on the valley (Kate Grenville who won an Orange
prize and obviously has local ancestors), went for a longish bicycle
ride with Rick and generally relaxed.
The following day we had dinner with the Daintrees (David is the
Rector) in their apartment under the chapel. It was good to catch up
and to eat delicious Australian oysters. Then for the rest of the week
we settled in, explored the local streets, had an enjoyable Greek
dinner with Geoffrey Lee Martin and old friend, wrote, read, tried to
sort out the computer and much else besides. I went in to Hachette and
split a bottle of wine with Emma Noble, the publicist and the sales
director, we had an amazing lunch for the Senor Common Room where I
sat next to a fascinating archaeologist whose aunt is Janet Laurence
and a ditto mediaevalist from Queensland. Also there was the sprightly
octogenarian Cardinal Cassidy who had come down specially from
Newcastle where he lives.
And so by train overnight to Brisbane to catch up with the chef Bruno
Loubet who is now cooking at a smart restaurant there called La
Baguette. I have written about this for the Spectator so watch
that space. It didn’t help that our train was halted by a burst oil
pipeline twenty minutes from our destination. We had to reverse for
two hours or so to a place called Casino and then come in on a
double-decker bus with a key window botch-repaired with masking tape
but apart from that all was more or less well.
Everything is more frantic than one could have envisaged. Six weeks or
more sounds like a long time but when you get here it seems like no
time at all. Now I must go to my friendly local Internet café, armed
with my memory stick and try to send this out into the ether.
Such is the life of a Visiting Fellow.
Tim Heald
