This book is probably best read as a period piece. It was written on another period piece, an ancient Olivetti portable typewriter that actually used paper, during the years between the mid-eighties and the early nineties. In that primitive era, we somehow managed to get by without iPads and cell phones. We wrote and received letters. A portable phone, weighing several pounds, was a clumsy novelty. Computers took up half the space of a good-sized room. And the cost of luxury, by today’s inflated standards, was modest.
As you will see, I haven’t tried to adjust the prices to bring them up to contemporary levels (which will undoubtedly have increased by next month, or even by next week). I decided that the original prices should remain for their historical interest, and because they have a certain nostalgic charm.
Other things, beside prices, have changed. Sadly, my old friend, the master tailor Douglas Hayward, is no longer with us, although his shop in Mount Street is still providing marvellous clothes for London’s best-dressed men about town. The Connaught Hotel has been given a most elegant facelift. The Concorde has landed in the museum. I’m told that you can now find cut-price cashmere, and that genuine Havana cigars are available—if you know where to go—in America. Madoff has replaced Boesky. Many of the patient and helpful people who made my researches such a pleasure have retired.
And yet one aspect of human nature remains unchanged. Most of us, I believe, still harbour a latent tendency toward extravagance. It lurks somewhere in the genes, ready to erupt at the hint of good fortune and the drop of a credit card. What else can explain the persistent accumulation of shoes by a woman who already owns 399 pairs, the acquisition of a second helicopter, a third Ferrari, a fifth house, a drum full of caviar? Who needs all that? And why? And are they worth the money?
As I write, we are going through another period of economic distress and uncertainty, and it may seem inappropriate to dwell on these glimpses of high-level expenditure. But they are life’s consolation prizes, and as such I think they deserve to be celebrated.
Peter Mayle, May 2011