This witty book, arising from the author's long and odd life, is cosmopolitan and politically incorrect. It is a personal memoir suspended from a family history and runs from mediaeval Prussia to the England of 2005. He makes no bones about anything: the vast distinction of his ancestry, the scenery of Bavaria and Granada, the Blitz, Churchill, the deplorable British educational system, sex, the 1930s degradation of France, besides counter-espionage, Belgian social habits and his own six careers. There is much on Winchester, Oxford and Army life, occasionally hilarious, and Venice comes in...