Ephraim Hardcastle
DONALD Trump’s UK ambassador Woody Johnson hoped that if the Queen opened the new US embassy in 2018, it would dispel Trump’s disapproval of the move from Grosvenor Square to Nine Elms in Battersea. Trump had tweeted: ‘I am not a big fan of the Obama administration having sold perhaps the best located and finest embassy in London for “peanuts”, only to build a new one in an off location for 1.2billion dollars. Bad deal.’ Four months earlier, Johnson unsuccessfully lobbied Foreign Office Minister Alan Duncan over lunch at Wiltons to secure the Queen for the opening. ‘He’d love the Queen to open their new embassy,’ wrote Duncan. Trump’s response? ‘I refused to make the trip to London,’ he tweeted. ‘Wanted me to cut ribbon – NO!’
DUNCAN, in another diary item about a Palace of Westminster dinner with exTory MP Chris White, recalls: ‘Chris, who chairs the Commons committees on arms export controls, says he would happily pinch [International Trade Secretary] Liz Truss’s bottom.’ ‘That’s why we need “arms control”,’ I replied. Surely Alan is a great loss to Britain’s Got Talent?
WITH Emily Mortimer’s BBC adaptation of Nancy Mitford’s The Pursuit of Love imminent, she credits her late father John for her obsession with the Mitford family, recalling his tale of the wartime decision to have their beloved pet goose ‘strangled and plucked’ for Christmas dinner. ‘Left in the cold cupboard overnight’, says Emily, ‘the creature amazed all concerned when it strolled out naked the following day, seemingly none the worse. It lived out its days wearing a specially knitted cardigan...’
ALI MacGraw, pictured as Brenda Patimkin in Goodbye, Columbus, knew her character was based on Philip Roth’s first girlfriend Maxine Groffsky but not the distress Roth caused with the portrayal. The new Roth biography reveals his encounter with Maxine’s sister Irene at a talk in support of Israel-Palestine negotiations. ‘You ruined my family’s life,’ she told him. He replied: ‘Irene, if you can find it in your heart to forgive [Palestinian leader] Yasser Arafat, surely you can find it in your heart to forgive me.’
JEMIMA Goldsmith’s condemnation of her ex-husband Imran Khan for blaming Pakistan rape victims reprises her anger when he refused to give her an advance copy of his autobiography, saying: ‘Too late. Don’t worry Jem, you come across as you always wanted to – Joan of Arc.’
THEOLOGIAN Hans Kung, who has died aged 93, berated Tony Blair for his Iraq War collaboration. Blair replied with a hand-written note that he was following his conscience rather than a desire to please America. Whatever happened to his personalised George Bush leather jacket?
JOAN Collins, hopping from London to LA with husband Percy, is accused online of breaking Covid rules. ‘I am allowed to travel for work and business,’ she tells The Spectator. ‘And my husband is American and allowed to travel back home.’