In the pocket of my dinner-jacket, because I can't bring myself to throw it away, is a slip of paper bearing in a neat italic hand the words 'I expect you have remembered to ask the Bishop to say grace.' It was passed to me some years ago during pre-dinner drinks at the judges' lodgings in Lincoln by the butler, who had sensed that, though formally in charge, I was not to the manner born.

I had the same sense of not quite belonging in the Plymouth lodgings last winter. The lodgings, a terraced dwelling of colossal proportions on the Hoe, was once Nancy Astor's town house. She left it to the nation, and it is now let out to visitors in all its glory by the city council; though I can't believe that the ensuite bathroom, where the bidet has a jet resembling Lake Geneva's, is as it was in her day. A small dinner party - all I could manage - huddled at one end of the 30-foot dining-table.

LRB 11 November 1999 | PDF Download