Upper class at play

About three years ago I encountered Ian, Lord Strachcarron, who was considering taking in fresh cash for his Unicorn Publishing house - I had in mind £50,000 but was obliged to be cautious in the absence of a clear idea of the outlook. In the end AN Other stepped in and I presume is now party to quite a success. However, I only suppose that this is so since when I saw Ian a few months ago he seemed to be in good heart.

But I have lately acquired a Unicorn book, Lady Pamela Berry: it is a superb book written by Pamela's daughter Harriet Cullen and produced to a very high standard. Only £20 on Amazon.

Lady Berry, the daughter of Churchill's chum, FE Smith, a brilliant advocate and eventually the first Earl of Birkenhead, was the wife of Lord Hartwell who inherited Telegraph newspapers, where my chum, Anthony Rentoul, was company secretary and played a pivotal role in switching the effective management over to Conrad Black. Anthony stopped Conrad from doing anything inappropriate in London and attended to the move from Fleet Street.

Telegraph was then publicly quoted and Conrad was asked by Cazenove to address some institutional shareholders on the outlook for the cover price. Conrad said that that would not be coming down only, some six weeks later, to announce just that. The Telegraph share price slumped and Cazenove resigned. Conrad pointed out to Cazenove that Conrad was the client only to be corrected by Cazenove's comment that its clients were the institutional shareholders of Britain.

Anyway, I treasure Anthony's enactment of Lord Hartwell's reluctance to change the habits of a lifetime and he has yet to decline to perform. For this I am very grateful.