As a literary editor and enthusiastic observer of Britain's publishing scene in the 1980s, John Walsh had a unique insight into the secrets of bestselling authors and their glamorous world of gossip, parties and scandal.
Now he has written an exquisitely indiscreet memoir . . .

Women fell for Frank Delaney, the presenter of Radio 4's Bookshelf, like pheasants at a Sandringham shoot. He was married four times and had stacks of girlfriends.

He was a big sexy women xxx man with a huge square head, twinkling eyes and a very fruity delivery, his Tipperary accent ideal for reciting poetry on the radio.

During lunch one day at a London restaurant called Smollensky's Balloon, he told me about his most notable conquest.

At a party at Broadcasting House, he met Princess Margaret, who told him about her love of Irish poetry.

'And of course, Mr Delaney,' she said, 'you run that radio programme on Saturdays, Poetry Please, don't you?'

'I do indeed, Ma'am,' he said, smiling.

'Are you a fan?'

'I never miss it. Tell me, do you know the work of James Clarence Mangan?'

'Yes indeed.'

'Are you familiar with his poem 'My Dark Rosaleen'?'

'Why wouldn't I be, Ma'am?
I learned it at school in Tipperary.'

'Jolly good,' said the princess. 'Do you think you might be able to recite it for me on your radio show?'

'Well, I suppose I could find some pretext that might .

. .' said Frank, dubiously.

'I mean as a special favour to me,' said Princess Margaret firmly.

'I'd be honoured, Ma'am. Consider it done.'

I'm not sure how Frank managed to make it obvious to Radio 4 listeners why he was reading the work of an obscure Irish poet.
But he managed it.

After the broadcast on Sunday afternoon, Delaney was in his flat in West London, wondering if he might receive some kind of royal acknowledgement. A note or a phone call?

But nothing.

He was a little downhearted but what, seriously, could he have expected?

The next Saturday evening he was, by chance, alone again. He listened to the repeat of the show, listened to his own voice caressing the fabulous climactic words of 'My Dark Rosaleen'.

Just as the signature tune played out at the end, the phone rang.

Frank lifted the receiver and heard a voice say, 'Mr Delaney?'

With great presence of mind, he said, 'Your Royal Highness'.

She said: 'I listened to your programme.

Thank you very much for including 'My Dark Rosaleen'. I thought you read it beautifully.'

All Frank could think of to say was: 'It was my pleasure, Ma'am.'

The princess was all businesslike. 'I think we should meet,' she said.

'Will you come to me or shall I come to you?'

Frank replied, 'It might be better if you were to come here.' He gave her the address, which she wrote down to give to her chauffeur. And, 45 minutes later, Princess Margaret walked through his Hammersmith front door.

'She stayed until Monday morning,' he said in a dazed voice.
'I saw her eatin' corn flakes!'

'Did you actually fancy her, though?' I asked. 'After all, she is about ten years older than you.' (Twelve, to be exact.)

'Oh god, yeah,' he said.

'Her skin was so soft.'

'Just out of interest,' I said, 'did it turn you on, being an Irishman, reading a nationalist poem about Irish rebellion to the sister of the Queen of England, then having her come round to have sex with you?'

'That didn't cross my mind,' he said.

'I was just amazed at what was happening.'

'What about her?' I inquired relentlessly. 'If you don't mind my asking, did she . . . display . . . enthusiasm?'

Frank creased his noble brow. 'She was pretty matter-of-fact about it. When things had gone a certain way, she said to me: 'Just — get on with it'.'

I never established if the story was true.
The princess was certainly known to have a thing about Irishmen. And Delaney was a torrential charmer of middle-aged women.

But how had the princess got his phone number? And I can't find 'Rosaleen' in the record of poems recited on Poetry Please.

Yet the story was so detailed, his report of the princess's fascination for the poem so plausible, I can't help hoping it might have been so.

'Would you like to meet Jilly Cooper?' I was asked one day in 1984.

'She has a new book out called The Common Years, about her neighbours in South London.'

Well yes, indeed I would. This was before she'd embarked on her massively successful sh*****g-in-the-shires blockbusters (Riders, Rivals, Polo), but I'd enjoyed Ms Cooper's newspaper columns on Soho (she thought nothing of descending into the seedy milieux of lunchtime strip clubs and confronting the clientele), and her witty dissection of the British class system in Class.

I'd also admired her presence on television: the tumbling blonde locks, the merry eyes and the slightly distraite delivery.

I thought she'd be very good fun. Also, we had something in common, literally.

I'd moved into a flat near Putney Common at about the time she moved out of the district.

So I travelled to the lovely house in Gloucestershire she shared with her husband, the publisher and military historian Leo Cooper.

The great lady sat in her favourite upright armchair while her two dogs, Fortnum and Mason, took up positions on either side of her, like attendant lords.

She was wearing tight black jeans and a ribbed cappuccino sweater down which her hair tumbled and jostled when she turned her head.

She laughed a lot.

We talked about the Common that we had in common, and she explained the origin stories behind certain landmarks: 'Alimony Villas' ('because at one time there were so many divorced women and their children living there'), 'Dogger Bank', 'Lurkers' Paradise' and, regrettably, 'Flashers' Point', 'Muggers' Tunnel' and the 'Eternal Triangle' ('a three-sided parking space, so-called because so many lovers — usually adulterers who could meet only during the day — park their cars there during lunch hour'.)

Jilly proved to be a terrific flirt — her breathy contralto voice was made for sotto-voce confidences — and an 18-carat gossip.

I stayed far longer than my allotted hour, revelling in her stories.

Her husband entered the room thrice to see if I'd gone yet.

The first time, he gave me a hard look. The second time, he gazed meaningfully at his watch. The third, he tossed a British Rail timetable on the chair beside me.

'Sorry,' I muttered, 'I really must go and get my train.' I rode home on the train comprehensively dazzled by Jilly Cooper.

Once I was in a group with Melvyn Bragg, who'd made it to the Groucho Club after a launch party at the Ritz.

We were sitting at a table in the bar, flooring the club red wine, when a man came up, knelt reverentially beside Melvyn and spoke urgently into his ear, while gesturing towards the brasserie.

Melvyn took a deep breath and ostentatiously undid his tie.

'I don't think so,' he said.

'We've been to a party, I'm relaxing with some friends. I don't feel like saying hello to anyone right now.'

The guy redoubled his efforts. 'Please, Melvyn. It would mean so much to them. It'd be a personal favour. I'd be really grateful.
Just come and say hi, that's all. Just for a minute.'

'Look,' said Melvyn, 'if they're so keen to say hi, bring them in here.' But the man wouldn't give up. No way were his sacred charges going to be forced to come, cap in hand, to Melvyn Bragg.

Eventually Melvyn, with a smile that suggested he really didn't want his post-party equilibrium disturbed by this pushy git any longer, said yes.

With whom was Melvyn Bragg being granted an audience he hadn't sought?

I had to find out.

I found him standing next to Bono, while the rest of the band U2 smiled and laughed as if they'd been friends with Melvyn Bragg for years. It was interesting to witness a hierarchical battle between the world-beating rock band and the TV arts titan.

There was a quartet of women at The Sunday Times to whom I was introduced when I was appointed as the paper's literary editor.

The fourth of them was Nigella Lawson.

I'd heard of the Chancellor's beautiful daughter, of course. She'd been the leading light of Palestinian-British entrepreneur Naim Attallah's aristocratic female workforce at Quartet Books, which was rudely known as 'Naim's Harem'.

More discussed than her sub-editorial skills were her Gina Lollobrigida looks, her intelligence and humour.

Nigella had bewitched and bewildered dozens of would-be boyfriends — writers, poets, lawyers — all over London. She invariably wore loose black frocks that a Sunday Times colleague said reminded him of bin liners, adding: 'Nigella is a genuine 1940s Hollywood movie star.

She should be swanning around in a red dress with red lipstick and her hair up.'

Just turned 29, she now regarded her new superior (ha!) with cool amusement and a faint hint of welcome in her fathomless brown eyes.

My first day was spent learning the ropes.
One area in which I needed instruction was computer skills. I jabbed at the keys, checked the manual and jabbed some more, but the keyboard sulkily refused to give up its secrets.

Nigella came and stood beside me as I poked and prodded.

'Like this?' I asked.

'No,' said Nigella.

'Go to the tab, then click and wait for the drop-down menu.'

I fiddled and faffed some more, without success.

'Nigella,' I said firmly, 'I'm rather at sea about electronics. Could you just show me how it's done and I'll try to copy you.'

Without a word, she straightened up, put one hand on the arm of my chair, the other hand on my shoulder and rolled the whole ensemble, on its castors, back from the desk.

Then, without so much as a how-d'ye-do, she turned round and sat on my lap.

It's hard to describe my exact feelings at that moment.

Thirty seconds before, I'd been cursing myself for being a technological birdbrain. Now, my brain struggled to process the fact that, like some exotic nesting bird, one of the great beauties of the 20th century had just settled herself upon my seated person.

'Can you see all right?' Nigella asked, shifting to the left so I could follow her hand movements on the keyboard.

'It's really simple.'

'Mmm-hmm,' I said into a face-full of luxuriant chestnut hair and a heady whiff of Diorissima. 'What you're doing is very helpful indeed.'

'You press this here, wait for the menu to appear, then click on that, and Bob's your uncle.' Nigella shifted her weight to the right, to look over her shoulder at where my face was emerging, slightly dazed, from the mass of hair.

'Have you got it now?'

'Absolutely,' I said. 'Fully briefed.'

The publisher Faber & Faber produced a book in 1987 entitled Who's Had Who. Despite the grammatical solecism in the title, it was a funny and eye-opening guide to historical sexual daisy chains.

It explained, for instance, how the actress Marlene Dietrich was distantly related (sexually speaking) to the TV entertainer Des O'Connor, because Ms Dietrich once had it off with Douglas Fairbanks Junior, who rogered Joan Crawford, who forgot herself with Clark Gable, who seduced Ava Gardner, who succumbed to the silver tongue of Howard Hughes, who had sex with Hedy Lamarr, who climbed aboard Stewart Granger, who dallied with the 'actress and ballet dancer' Gillian Vaughan, who married Des O'Connor in 1960.

Astonishing historico-politico-cultural connections could be made via the bedroom: U.S.

president Ronald Reagan was connected to DJ Tony Blackburn in eight 'rogers', while it takes as many as 14 to get from Elvis Presley to Prince Charles (via Jayne Mansfield, Marilyn Monroe, both Kennedy brothers, Mick Jagger and Jackie Onassis, among others).

In March 1990, the books impresario Martyn Goff asked me, along with a bookseller and a reviewer, to help him suggest to the Queen which books she might read over the summer. 

The request came in a letter on the creamy vellum paper of Sotheran's of Sackville Street, the venerable antiquarian booksellers where Martyn had been chairman for years.

We four were to choose books not just for Her Majesty but for her guests at Balmoral.

Each of us had our own suggestions of novels, biographies, works of history, art books, travel books and nature notes.

Several books pretty well selected themselves.

English Country House Interiors, Scottish Colourists, Mark Girouard's The English Town and Robert Gray's The King's Wife: Five Queen Consorts might already be on the Balmoral shelves but we sent them anyway.

In fiction, we chose, among others, Mary Wesley's A Sensible Life, John Mortimer's Titmuss Regained and Lies Of Silence by Brian Moore.

This last was a controversial choice because the plot concerned the IRA forcing a hotel manager to drive a truck laden with explosives to blow up his own hotel and kill several members of the Orange Order. 

Did the royals need a reminder of the Troubles (and the blowing up of Lord Mountbatten ten years earlier)?

But once you started asking if this or that book might give offence, there was no stopping.

Some of the non-fiction choices gave us, as they say, pause.

Would, say, Prince Philip relish the details (of relentless gay pursuit and double-agent spying) in Francis Wheen's biography of the sexual adventurer Tom Driberg?

'Sod it,' I said. 'It'll make a nice change after The Oxford Book Of Humorous Prose.'

The list ended on a note of cuteness.
Shrewdly noting that the Prince and Princess of Wales's summer holiday would involve two children, William (then aged seven) and Harry (five), we added Kathleen Hale's Orlando The Marmalade Cat: A Seaside Holiday. If you loved this article therefore you would like to acquire more info regarding como empezar un xxx porn i implore you to visit our own webpage.  

And after we'd chosen our 32 titles, I asked if the yearly selections ever got any feedback from Balmoral.

'Nothing from the Queen herself,' Martyn Goff said, 'but we get a formal thank you from her staff.

And an occasional request that we send more picture books or art books or horse books next year.' I replied: 'So we never know if the Queen has read any book, or if she enjoyed it?'

'As a matter of fact,' said Martyn, 'there's one book we definitely know she's read because I heard about it, in confidence, from one of her private secretaries.'

'My God,' I squawked.
'Which?'

It was on a royal visit to Singapore. The Queen had left her book on the aeroplane and wanted something to read, so the private secretary gave her his copy of The Remains Of The Day, by Kazuo Ishiguro [about downstairs life in a 1930s English stately home]. 

She later told her aide she had enjoyed the novel, but added: 'There's one thing I want to ask you.

Is it really like that — below stairs, I mean. Is that really how they talk?'

I love this story. I love to think the Queen might take Ishiguro's neutral prose style — pitched somewhere between English politeness and Japanese formality — as the natural mode of discourse downstairs, where valets are always discussing back-collar studs and rumours about 'flashy' new ways of cleaning teaspoons.

Adapted from Circus Of Dreams: Adventures in the 1980s Literary World, by John Walsh, published by Constable at £25.

© John Walsh 2022. To order a copy for £22.50 (offer valid to 03/04/22; UK P&P free on orders over £20), visit mailshop.co.uk/books or call 020 3176 2937.