I have repeatedly been asked by friends why I have chosen to go to Florence. As if one needed a reason for going to Florence. Some suspect an ulterior motive but you do not need to worry: There will not be a Florence book. The truth is that I fled.
Like Tony Blair and Gordon Brown I had not been invited to the royal wedding in London. Rome was out too because unlike Robert Mugabe, I had not been invited to the beatification ceremony of Pope John Paul II. So I couldn't go to Rome either. Funny people those chefs of protocol.
On the other hand, Buckingham Palace was right not to invite me: I have –after all – not made a secret of my views about Camilla. What bad taste for Camilla to be placed in the first row at this wedding! I wonder what the protocol arrangements would have been had Diana still been alive? Would the divorced mother not have been placed next to her ex-husband? Where the hell is the sensibility of William and Harry? They even made Camilla’s granddaughter a bridesmaid. Their mother would not have been dead had Camilla (and their father) not connived to deliberately corrupt, drain and quash that marriage.
That explains my exclusion. But why exclude Blair and Brown?
