Alistair Horne

Oy vey! Uglies could become a protected species, like silver-backed gorillas, Serena Williams, or Mark Zuckerberg. Just think what a Pandora’s box would open if such legislation passed in America. The UK would blindly follow, then the rest of Europe. I hate to think if Iran, the Middle East, Africa, and all those Asian countries followed suit. There are far more ugly people than beautiful ones, even in Hollywood. This would cause a far greater financial crisis than poor old Greece ever faced. Would we have to pay compensation to Dominique Strauss-Kahn, George Papandreou, Roman Abramovich, The Rolling Stones, Harvey Weinstein, Bill Kristol, David Frum, John (disgusting) Podhoretz, Serena Williams’s family, or, come to think of it, NBA superstars?

No, this will never do. We taxpayers cannot afford it, but when was the last time professors took practical matters into account? Daniel Hamermesh, an economics professor at the University of Texas, wants to push the US toward new legal frontiers, and to hell with what happens next. I could use 230,000 greenbacks because a couple of my mistresses demand raises, but I am not about to do a Bride of Wildenstein in order to become a protected species and collect. And speaking of the unspeakable Wildensteins, a friend has pointed out to me that what I wrote about Anne Sinclair’s grandfather, Paul Rosenberg, was absolutely wrong. Her uncle, he says and I have ascertained, was a very good man and very honest. The trouble was that I had written about her grandfather Paul, not her uncle Alexandre.

Otherwise, everything could not be more hunky-dory. My friend Sir Alistair Horne has just published a wonderful book with the charming title But What Do You Actually Do? (a standard question of know-nothings to writers they collar at cocktail parties). Published by Weidenfeld, the book’s subtitle is A Literary Vagabondage. After 25 major historical works, Alistair should answer that he compiles lists of ignoramuses and morons, adding that “Your name will now be included in my list.” Alistair won the Hawthornden Prize and the Wolfson Prize and along with our very own Paul Johnson is our greatest living historian.

Sir Alistair was a foreign correspondent for the Daily Telegraph, but he’s actually done more than write. He ended the war as a captain in the Coldstream Guards and was attached to MI5 in the Middle East. He has traveled as widely as anyone I know, and I have known him for more than 40 years. He was responsible along with Bill Buckley and Arnaud de Borchgrave for kick-starting my career, has encouraged my writing throughout my life, and if his delightfully anecdotal book has one fault it regards yours truly. He devotes two pages to Greece’s greatest writer since Homer and makes me out to be something no one would dream of dropping as a fiancé. He is much too kind; if only I were the man he claims I am. Thanks, Al.