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***
Frank Johnson’s beautiful memorial service was on Friday: how he’d have enjoyed the parade of grandees. In 1997, when he edited The Spectator, we cooked up a wonderful act of journalistic mischief: an interview with the Spice Girls in which they revealed they were Thatcherites. Recently Frank tended to telephone me pretending to be a (strangely Cockney) Soviet Marshal calling Stalin at Headquarters (Stavka). How I miss the East End’s urchin-Marshal calls: ‘Hey lad, Marshal Frank Zhukov calling Stavka! Permission to launch the offensive, mate!’
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On Friday Santa and I went to Marlborough House for the charity dinner of Ark, an impressive institution that uses auctions and splendour to coax rich hedge-funders into supporting Aids treatment in Mozambique, a noble and desperate cause. Millions were raised. Bill Clinton, Ark’s partner in this admirable enterprise, spoke in his seductively husky drawl. Prince played. The party’s magnificence marks London’s emer-gence as an equal to New York — in splendour but also in the new cult of philanthropy. It reminded me of history’s most extravagant ball: Prince Potemkin’s 1791 party for his partner-in-power-and-love, Catherine the Great. He was like a rock star and statesman combined: the prince also played his own songs, not unlike the pop star Prince. Potemkin served puddings garnished with real diamonds, an idea for Ark next year.
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I launched my book at Asprey on Monday. Stalin was here in London to plan his biggest bank robbery exactly a century ago: he might have found Asprey an irresistible target for his gang. My highlight was taking my children, Lily and Sasha, to their first grown-up party. Sasha, 4, was very proud that the book was dedicated to him. Santa is relieved Stalin’s dark domestic reign is finally over. But it’s taken a terrible toll on my family: I’m ashamed to say that my children were able to recognise Stalin even before they knew Thomas the Tank Engine.
Young Stalin by Simon Sebag Montefiore is published by Weidenfeld & Nicolson.
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