Postscript
• • •
The twenty years are nearly up, and there is no sign of Carlo Sforza's being proved right— certainly not if one goes by the two new books on Mussolini thaj James Joll reviewed here last week. The Duce is still a clown, and not even the devotion of his mistress lends dignity to his death.
What Sforza couldn't have expected was that instead of the Italians' romanticising their leader it would be the British who in less than twenty years were paying their respects to the men he led. A couple of recent films have admitted and accepted that Italians, just like anybody else, could have the gift of courage, and there are those of us who were bitterly ashamed of our anti-Italian propaganda during the war who are grateful for it. I was bombed by Italian single- seater fighter-bombers coming in, time after time, at deck level and into a giant's Catherine wheel of gunfire, over the British fleet covering the North African landings, and I hope never to meet again as determined and as courageous an enemy. On the Fifth Army front in Italy, I saw the first Italians to go into action as our co-belligerents—a Bersaglieri brigade, or a brigade with Bersaglieri in it, for I remember the glossy green cocks' feathers in their helmets —making a frontal attack on a German-held hill, and I hope that I shall always have allies as gallant. I am glad that as a people we have grown out of the small-mindedness that would have denied courage both to the enemy and to the ally.
You may find it difficult to believe that there is an eating-place in Baker Street called `Maison Wimpy,' but I couldn't have made it up, could I? Anyway, you can now get 'Farmhouse Teas, 3s. 6d.,' at the Corner House in Coventry Street, which perhaps ought to be renamed `Rus in' Urbe.'
My colleague Leslie Adrian has received a letter from Erwin Wascy, Ruthrauti and Ryan Ltd., a public-relations firm, that reads: I expect you will soon be preparing for your May and June issues and as that is the time of year when fresh home-grown new potatoes come into the shops in quantity you might wish to have sonic special recipes and photographs of them. If so, do let me know what you would like and whether you would prefer colour or black-and-white photographs. I shall be pleased to supply these to you on an exclusive basis. When big-businessmen grumble at the fees
they pay their public-relations consultants they fail to allow for the trouble and expense in-
volved in unearthing such useful information as that the Spectator comes out monthly and is in a
position to choose between coloured and black- and-white photographs. Our readers, at any rate, will be duly grateful for the efforts made on
their behalf when they see the coloured pictures of new potatoes in our June number. 'On an exclusive basis,' too, thanks to Erwin Wasey, Ruthrauff and Ryan Ltd., so sucks boo to the Economist.
There must be a GPO rule against throwing on to doorsteps and into the street the string with which bundles of letters are tied: I wish postmen would work to it.
On the front at Brighton is the Milkmaid Pavilion, a milk-and-cheese bar, where for one- and-ninepence you can have a substantial snack of a decent piece of English cheese, fresh crusty bread and butter. It also serves omelettes, salads and so on. The omelettes are all, and only, cheese omelettes, and if you ask for a plain omelette, as we did for a two-year-old child the other day, the waitress will serve you, as a special favour (and charge for), a cheese ome- lette with the cheese filling outside, and separate from, the omelette proper, so that you can leave it. Indeed, they are pretty tolerant there alto- gether: you can't have black coffee, even though Cone containers of black coffee are being pub- licly kept hot behind the counter, but you aren't actually made to consume the cream you are obliged to pay for and to accept at the table- is will be served, on request, in separate little jugs, in which it may be left, and no questions asked. And while the salad you order to accom- pany a plate full of cheese with bread and butter must itself be a cheese salad, you are permitted not to eat, but only to pay for, the heap of grated cheese in the middle of the lettuce and tomato. Just don't ask for a salad without cheese, that's all. (Or for oil and vinegar with it either, for that matter.) * Full marks to a newish restaurant, Wolfes, of Abingdon Road, off Kensington High Street- not only for their cooking, which struck me as what the French call serious (I will go no further than that on only one visit), but for a well- chosen wine list, sensibly priced. Each wine conies from a reputable shipper, whose name is duly recorded: there are German wines (from Morgan Furze) for as little as 14s. 6d. and 16s. 6d. a bottle; a respectable rose at 12s. 6d.; and a named bourgeois claret at 13s. 6d., as well ELF. such magnificences as a 1949 Yquen at 49s., a 1957 Corton Charlemagne at 27s. 6d. and a 1953 Latour at 49s. 6d.-a11,1 think, much cheaper than in the chi-chi places farther east. We drank a good, well-balanced 1955 Château L'Ermitagc, from Listrac, at 16s. 6d., which is not at all a grasping mark-up on the retail price of 10s. 3d., especially as it had been carefully decanted an hour beforehand for our host, who had gone to the trouble of ordering it when he booked his table. If all hosts were as thoughtful and all restaurateurs as reasonable, dining-out would be more agreeable more often.
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