High life
Heroic subjects
Taki
Alistair has just finished his book on Napoleon's last years as emperor, an opus I can't wait to get my hands on. Written by the best about the best. Napo treated Josephine and Maria Walewska pretty badly, but got his come-uppance from the fat Marie-Louise who forgot Europe's greatest man once she did zi-zi pon-pon with the one-eyed but priapic Austrian cav- alry general, Count Neipperg. This is how I got to switch the conversation. Only a woman could forget Napoleon because her lover could never get it down. In Geneva, of all places.
About 30 years ago I showed Alistair some of Taki's best work. The greatest epic poem since the Iliad began like this: 'It was a dark and stormy night and her engine was throbbing . . .' or something to that effect. Home encouraged me to keep going and Miss Whitney, get me the three little pigs.' sent me two famous writers' course books which alas I never read. If it wasn't for Alistair, Greece would now brag about only one Homer. When Home sold his house at 7 The Boltons in 1972, he gave a large party. That is where I met Alan Clark, whose mas- sive Barbarossa, about the Russian-German conflict of 1941-45, was the most prominent book in the field. I have never had a cross Word with either writer, although Home once came close. I wrote in these here pages that just as Alistair said how much he believed in monogamy he fell into a crevasse. (We were skiing.) Home insists it was because I was a lousy guide. I thought it was the Almighty sending him a message.
There is nothing like a liquid lunch with admirable men in a place where women cannot discombobulate one. Thank God, the Garrick kept ladies and Paxman out. Although the place lets in hacks, at least it has kept some standards. And speaking of standards, I never thought I'd live to see the day when a Tory minister would resort to the rhetoric of envy `. .. his Venetian palazzo, his Mexican hacienda, his chateau In France ... ' as that poor excuse of a hairdresser, Michael Heseltine, did last week during the party conference. (Inci- dentally, a Venetian palazzo belonging to Alistair McAlpine saved the crimper's life four years or so ago when the Transylvani- an grave-digger look-alike suffered his heart attack.) Heseltine wears a Guards necktie having served only six months. He puts down Jimmy Goldsmith in a below-the-waist attack. He was the first Judas among the many that backstabbed Margaret Thatcher. It is par for the course. As they say, where there's shame there is still hope, but there's no shame in Hezza.
But back to more heroic subjects. April may be the cruellest month, but October is my country's finest hour. It was in October 1940 when tiny Greece was the first and only ally to join Britain voluntarily against the Axis. I remember the screaming sirens, the ringing of church bells, my father and uncles going off to war, my mother crying; the first news of victory in Koritsa, then Tepeleni; the wounded coming back with- out limbs and being cheered by the old and the young who had stayed behind; the first Italian prisoners being paraded and laughed at.
There's a wonderful book out — Greece 1940-41 Eyewitnessed — compiled by my childhood friend Costas Hadjipateras, with Maria Fafalios. The introduction is by Patrick Leigh Fermor. No less an expert than C.M. Woodhouse gave it a brilliant review in the TLS last August. I quote:
The Greeks never stopped fighting. Their love of honour ... their high morale implied chivalry and humanity as well as courage. A notable episode concerns the surrender of the last Greek fort when its line of supply was finally cut off. The German commander mounted a guard of honour for them when
they finally came out. 10
Last Saturday night my last uncle, a man who had lowered the 400-meter hurdle record eight times between 1923 and 1931, twice an Olympian and ten times a Greek national champion, a war hero in the Alba- nian campaign, died peacefully aged 92. They no longer make them like that any more.
Jeffrey Bernard will return next week.
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