Nick Foulkes was commissioned to interview Princess Ira von Fürstenberg for The Aesthete column in the HTSI (How To Spend It) supplement to WeekendFT, an agreeable task.
You will either laugh at Ira von F or love her. I love her as seen through Nick Foulkes’s eyes. She hasn’t wasted a moment of her long life, getting married aged fifteen in 1955 and having her first child the following year. By 1967 she was starring in her first film: a spaghetti, sci-fi, spy spoof, Matchless, with Patrick O’Neal and Donald Pleasance. Now eighty-three she is living in a flat in a former monastery in the Latina district of Madrid.
I usually find the interviewees in The Aesthete intolerable twits trying to define themselves by the contents of their wardrobes and fridges. Ira, may I Princess, is a breath of fresh air. She cannot help name dropping with her pedigree. “The best gift I’ve received is probably an apartment in Rome that was given to me by a lover. But the most amusing gift I ever received was a wedding present when I married Prince Alfonso von Hohenlohe in 1955. It was from Fiat, which was owned by my mother’s family; they gave me a Cinquecento that had been specially made for us. It was red and came gift-wrapped with a big bow.
The podcast I’m listening to is … Podcast? I don’t even know what that is.”
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The Conservative Party have taken a wrong turn asking their membership to vote for candidates. Inevitably members vote for the candidate they like (usually the most right wing) without considering how the whole electorate will react at an election. The next chance for party members to get it wrong will be next month when London members will choose, from a list of three, their candidate to stand against the Labour incumbent, Sadiq Khan, in May next year. The Conservative contenders are Susan Hall (member of the London assembly since 2017), Mozammel Hussain KC (a criminal defence barrister you’ve never heard) and Daniel Korski (businessman and former special adviser to David Cameron). Actually I doubt you have heard of any of them. So it looks as if Sadiq Khan will get in for a third term. Beats me why the Conservatives cannot get a big hitter to stand but Sadiq Khan will keep on running.