Natasha Hamilton, formerly of the band Atomic Kitten and, far right, William Sitwell, restaurant critic for The Daily Telegraph, host as Roy Sommer, Managing Director of Davidoff cigars presents the ‘Davidoff Bon Viveur of The Year Award’ to Alexander Fiske-Harrison, for his article ‘Courage Best’. On the left is AFH’s old friend, whom he had not seen since 1991 and who recently left the British Army after 23 years, including two decades in the 22 SAS, and with whom AFH is now working on new project, more which later (Photo: Jules Annan)

Click on image for PDF

COURAGE BEST

Alexander Fiske-Harrison

Britain’s only bullfighter and veteran bull runner, pays homage to British stoicism and bravery

THE most laconic tale of British bravery in combat is arguably Lord Uxbridge’s sang froid remark after being struck by cannon shot at the Battle of Waterloo: “My God, Sir, I’ve lost my leg.”

To which the Duke of Wellington replied:

“Yes, Sir, so you have.”

One doesn’t need to be a Kenneth Tynan to recognise this as a performance, even if made unconsciously, with understatement used to say infinitely more than the words themselves. It does not make much difference if the story is apocryphal: the mere fact that the story has survived in popular consciousness in this form tells us exactly what the British perceive their own particular brand of bravery to be.

It is also hardly surprising, then, that I grew up with the Charge of the Light Brigade as my model, as it was to the British Army. Indeed, it is from the cannon captured that day that most of the Victoria Cross medals are cast (more of the VC later).

Compare this form of courage with a tale from my adopted country of Spain. In 1936, during the Spanish Civil War, the medieval Alcázar fortress of Toledo was under siege to little effect, when the attackers captured the son of the colonel of the garrison. They reconnected the severed telephone lines and summoned the colonel to the parapets so he could watch as his son was handed the telephone to tell him that he would be executed unless the fortification surrendered. The colonel told his son that ‘he knew what to do’. Father and son saluted one another, the son turned and told his captor to shoot him, which he duly did, before he turned to salute the father, who returned the salute.

The tales of Uxbridge and the Spanish colonel are extreme examples of courage. But like a cocktail mixed with alien versions of similar ingredients, the latter’s is somehow un-British. Nevertheless, we recognise the resemblance.

Seneca, the father of Roman Stoicism, was a Spaniard born in Córdoba, hence the Hispanic flair in his pronouncements on this subject. “A man who has learned how to die has unlearned how to be a slave,” he wrote. It was no idle theorising, for within twelve months the Emperor, his former pupil, falsely accused him of conspiracy. Seneca duly took his own life, remarking, with more than a hint of caustic Britishness: “After murdering his mother and brother, it only remained for Nero to kill his teacher and tutor.”

One of the reasons I came to Spain was to witness an echo of such bravery outside of war. Ernest Hemingway gave a similar reason for coming to watch bullfights one hundred years ago. I remember when I first went to Pamplona to run with the bulls, I witnessed the boiling mass of 300 tonnes of humanity fleeing four tonnes of toros bravos, Spanish fighting bulls. The mass of people shattered and fled like a medieval rabble under a heavy cavalry charge. This was a sight few people in the modern era will ever see: a populace put to flight through its own streets, as though a siege had been broken, a city wall breached. Of course, I am aware that the event itself, and even talking about having done it, is all rather un-British.

Alexander Fiske-Harrison runs between two bulls in Pamplona in 2011

Continue reading →

Dean Winters with Michael Nyqvist in John Wick

I crashed the New York magazine interview of a favourite actor of mine, Dean Winters, whom I remember so well as the chief villain’s consigliere, Avi. (Along with a thousand other credits, including from Law & Order whose set I had just been on as I was staying with my dearest friend from university, Hugh Dancy, who leads the current series, and his wonderful wife Claire Danes in Manhattan.)

Dean, and the journalist Nate Jones, were in the oldest bar in the city, The Ear at 326 Spring Street, near the Hudson (actually, where the Hudson river used lap against the front door.)

Kela 2022

(Auf Deutsch darunter.)

FRIEND

“There lay the dog Argos.

Then, when he noticed Odysseus near,

he wagged his tail and both his ears drooped,

but he could no longer move towards his master

to approach him; however, seeing him from afar, he wiped away a tear…

And then death took Argos as his fate,

immediately after seeing Odysseus in the twentieth year.”

Homer, The Odyssey, Book 17

Like a perfect pebble,
found upon a beach strewn with one thousand rough-edged stones—
this one, polished by nothing but coincidence,
feeling smooth only to your touch.

A comfort,
a concern,
a greeting and goodbye—
a weapon sometimes,
loyal against the world,
against everything not her own.

But for her own she stood
more sure,
more solid,
than Mother Earth herself.

Which is why you held that stone in your hand,
forgetting, for as long as you could,
its unbearable weight,
until your arms ached.

Until that day,
you had to walk out into the sea,
grasping her tight,
delaying the letting go—
fending off the horror,
fending off the betrayal,
fending off
the forgetfulness of human grief.

Alexander Fiske-Harrison

Kela, a Belgian-German Shepherd cross, was born in the Alps of Salzburgerland in Austria on Christmas Eve in 2009,  and died in the arms of her mistress, my girlfriend, Klarina Pichler, almost fifteen years later, on the day of San Pedro Claver y Corberó, patron saint of slaves, and those who travel by sea which she did so much, in the hills of Sotogrande in Andalusia looking out onto the Mediterranean Sea. 

As a puppy, she, out of the entire litter, chose her mistress herself – a pebble among rough stones, smooth only to her touch .

At the end, her lithe mass of muscle once giving such speed and strength was diminished to nothing but an almost unmoving happiness at our company and her mistress and I alternated carrying her wherever she needed to go.

Even then, we did not want to let go, did not want to let the veterinarian in to our house beside the sea, betraying the definition of loyalty itself, an act of kindness that felt so great a sin it would make Judas himself turn red with shame.

(She was the most notable dogs I have ever met, famous among those who knew her and even among those who did not, making national newspapers like The Daily Telegraph, online here.)

Kela 2018

SEELENSCHATZ

“Dort lag der Hund Argos.
Als er Odysseus nahe bemerkte,
wedelte er mit seinem Schwanz und ließ beide Ohren hängen,
aber er konnte nicht mehr zu seinem Herrn gelangen,
um sich ihm zu nähern; dennoch, ihn aus der Ferne sehend, wischte er eine Träne weg…
Und dann nahm der dunkle Tod Argos als sein Schicksal,
gleich nachdem er Odysseus im zwanzigsten Jahr gesehen hatte.”
Homer, Die Odyssee, Buch 17

Wie ein perfekter Kiesel,
gefunden an einem Strand, übersät mit tausend rauen Steinen—
dieser eine, zufällig geschliffen,
fühlt sich nur unter deiner Berührung glatt an.

Ein Trost,
eine Sorge,
ein Gruß und Abschied—
manchmal eine Waffe,
treu gegen die Welt,
gegen alles, was nicht ihr eigen ist.

Aber für die Ihren stand sie
fester,
solider,
als Mutter Erde selbst.

Deshalb hieltest du diesen Stein,
vergessend, so lange du konntest,
sein unerträgliches Gewicht,
bis deine Arme schmerzten.

Bis zu dem Tag,
an dem du ins Meer hinausschrittest,
sie fest umklammernd,
zögertest du das Loslassen hinaus—
wehrtest das Entsetzen ab,
wehrtest den Verrat ab,
wehrtest die Vergesslichkeit menschlichen Leids ab.

Alexander Fiske-Harrison

Kela, eine belgisch-deutsche Schäferhund-Mischung, wurde am Heiligen Abend 2009 in den Alpen des Salzburger Landes in Österreich geboren und starb fast fünfzehn Jahre später in den Armen ihrer Herrin, Klarina Pichler, am Tag des San Pedro Claver y Corberó, dem Schutzpatron der Sklaven und derer, die auf See reisen, was sie so oft tat, in den Hügeln von Sotogrande in Andalusien mit Blick auf das Mittelmeer.

Als Welpe wählte sie, aus dem ganzen Wurf, ihre Herrin selbst aus – ein Kieselstein unter rauen Steinen, glatt nur zu ihrer Berührung.

Am Ende war ihre schlanke Muskelmasse, die ihr einst so viel Schnelligkeit und Stärke verlieh, zu nichts weiter als einer fast unbeweglichen Freude an unserer Gesellschaft verkommen, und ihre Herrin und ich wechselten uns ab, sie überallhin zu tragen, wo sie hin musste.

Selbst dann wollten wir nicht loslassen, wollten den Tierarzt nicht in unser Haus am Meer lassen, was das Wesen der Treue selbst verriet, eine Tat der Güte, die sich so sehr nach Sünde anfühlte, dass sie sogar Judas selbst zum Erröten gebracht hätte.

(Sie war der bemerkenswerteste Hund, den ich je getroffen habe, berühmt unter denen, die sie kannten, und sogar unter denen, die sie nicht kannten, und schaffte es in nationale Zeitungen wie The Daily Telegraph, online hier).

FINANCIAL TIMES

FT Weekend

March 6/March 7 2004

LATIN AMERICA: ARGENTINA

[Photo Caption: The Argentinian sport at the Campo de Polo de Buenos Aires – Getty]

A world city rises again

Alexander Fiske-Harrison, in Buenos Aires, finds a metropolis re-energised by Argentina’s bright young things

My friend, a Buenos Aires socialite called Guadalupe Marey, leant over our martinis and summed up the feeling in a single phrase, “Buenos Aires está de vuelta” — Buenos Aires is back.

Two years after the riots, the currency devaluation following removal of the dollar-peso peg and the subsequent default on international debt, the City of Good Air has regained some of its former ambience (although the literal air still suffers from traffic fumes).

Nowhere is this more the case than in the immensely fashionable Palermo Viejo area, which houses the exquisitely laid-back Bar 6, supplier of the continent’s best martinis.

Palermo was once the dark place of Buenos Aires, where gauchos invented the tango in cheap brothels and drank in even cheaper bars before their nightly knife-fights in the streets. Argentina’s greatest author, Jorge Luis Borges, grew up there and summed it up as a place of “carefree poverty”. Now, it most resembles the twin Sohos of London and New York: carefree but by no means poor.

Buenos Aires is a popular year-round destination, but its popularity surges during the Argentine Polo Open, which takes place in December. The Open is quite unlike any other. These are the best players in the Argentina, which means the best in the world.

While it’s fun to watch half a tonne of horse and rider indulge in tactical acrobatics at 30mph, it’s also very rewarding to cast your opera classes around the stadium or simply go and prop up the long bar afterwards. This is where the world’s jet-set mingles with Buenos Aires’ most beautiful. You will find the young English pros chatting up their billionaire patrons, trying to maintain their enthusiasm in the game so that next year’s vets’ bills will be covered. Beside them you will find the more impoverished and yet more skilled Argentine players, usually trying to juggle selling a horse bred on their estancia with preventing the sylph-like beauty on their arm being chatted up by the competition.

Buenos Aires (BA to the cognoscenti) as a tourist attraction is a city of imposing monuments: the graffiti-riddled grandeur of the Plaza del Congreso celebrating the power of a country that was the seventh richest on earth a century ago; or the famous tombs of Recoleta, the Belgravia of BA, described by Borges as “the coming together of marble and flowers/and the little squares cool as patios”. This splendour can be fully lived at the incredible Alvear Palace Hotel where one can relax in the Versailles of all cocktail bars before sloping down for dinner at La Bourgogne (see right).

However, for every piece of the old BA there is a piece of the new to match. Philippe Starck has teamed up with Argentina’s greatest fashionista, Alan Faena, to produce El Porteño, a combination of cutting-edge hotel and apartment block. And if you want a fusion of South American cuisine and European sensibility try the Gran Bar Danzon, a favourite with BA’s bright young things, its décor paying lip-service to Manhattan chic.

After dinner one again has the choice between old and new. For the historic city the tango shows are good if you know where to go, Bar Sur in San Telmo being among the best.

Others might like to see what the city’s dancing scene is like at ultra-fashionable nightclubs such as Rumi in Palermo or Tequila on the outskirts. If exclusivity is defined by second-tier polo players, B-list celebs and glamour models queueing at a door, these places really are the Holy of Holies.

DETAILS
Info: Gran Bar Danzon, tel. +54 11 4811 1108
Bar Sur, San Telmo, tel. +54 11 4362 6086;
http://www.bar-sur.com.ar

LA BOURGOGNE

A jewel in Buenos Aires’ crown is the superb La Bourgogne restaurant in the Alvear Palace – one of the few hotels of its size and grandeur that has remained in private hands, which may have been its saving grace. Continue reading →

 

Alexander Fiske-Harrison, 48, an amateur bullfighter, said that he had recognised the breed on the news: “I look at the high hips, the strong shoulder. That is a fighting animal.”

 

(Ambos artículos están disponibles en español aquí)

THE TIMES

Saturday June 7 2025

… and now there’s a bull on the run

Birmingham, a city famous for its golden statue of a charging bull, has had a real-life version roaming its streets (Charlie Moloney writes).

The animal, thought to be a Spanish fighting bull, was spotted about 9.30am yesterday in Digbeth, about a mile southeast of the centre. It was filmed trotting through Small Heath then charging into traffic. Later in the afternoon street cleaners helped to guide it into an old building.

Alexander Fiske-Harrison, 48, an amateur bullfighter, said that he had recognised the breed on the news: “I look at the high hips, the strong shoulder. That is a fighting animal.”

If anyone encounters a bull, it is best to “just stay away from it”, he said. “If a bull is fresh, it could see you at 50 yards and charge. Just get out of sight.”

Fiske-Harrison, who has written books on bullfighting (Into The Arena & The Bulls Of Pamplona) said he had spoken to several contacts, including matadors and bull-breeders from Seville, Spain and bull-runners he knew from Pamplona, Spain, none of whom could believe that the unbranded animal was in the city.

He feared that getting the bull into captivity could prove dangerous and suggested destroying the animal might be the most humane option. “I would literally take a large piece of cloth on a long tick and I would lure it into the back of a truck and then just lock the door, but good luck doing that if you do not have 15 years of training,” he said.

Birmingham city council said: “Council staff weren’t fazed when they came across a stray bull roaming the streets. When asked to help, our street cleansing crew was on the case, helping to remove this beautiful, albeit misplaced, animal to safety. They helped corral it into the old Dunelm site where colleagues in animal welfare and park rangers kept it and the public safe. We are trying to identify an owner.”

West Midlands police were liaising with the council to ensure the bull was taken to safety.

Spanish national newspaper ABC‘s article on the subject is translated beneath the screenshot below. 

Alexander Fiske-Harrison, author, philosopher, and expert aficionado of the world of the Spanish bullfight, stated that the animal was no ordinary bovine, but a toro de lidia, a fighting bull.

ABC
International

A Fighting Bull Causes a Stir in the Streets of Birmingham and Astonishes Locals
The animal, identified as a fighting bull, was spotted trotting through the English city on Friday morning. Authorities managed to capture it without incident.

An unusual and startling episode disrupted the routine of Birmingham’s residents on Friday morning: a large bull was seen trotting freely through the streets of the Digbeth area, near New Bond Street, around 9:30 a.m. (local time). The scene, captured in several videos shared by locals and now circulating on social media, shows the animal moving among cars and pedestrians with disconcerting calm—though naturally causing alarm among those seeing such a sight for the first time.

West Midlands Police confirmed the sighting and reported that they intervened immediately in coordination with Birmingham City Council to ensure the safety of both the animal and the public. According to local authorities, the bull was guided to the former Dunelm site, where an animal welfare team examined and took custody of it. No injuries or material damage were reported.

Though the owner of the animal has not yet been definitively identified, nor is it known how it managed to escape, a statement gathered by ABC provides a key detail that may shift the understanding of the event: Alexander Fiske-Harrison, writer, philosopher, and expert aficionado of the world of the Spanish bullfight, stated that the animal was no ordinary bovine, but a toro de lidia, a fighting bull.

The story has sparked all manner of reactions among Birmingham residents, who shared videos online of the bull crossing roads and walking along pavements, while some people retreated in evident fear, despite the animal showing no signs of aggression.

THE MAIL ON SUNDAY
April 6, 2025
SHE’S the niece of a bullfighter, so coxing the Cambridge crew next weekend holds no fear for Isabella Fiske-Harrison, right. Isabella, 21, a third-year Classics student at Trinity College, whose uncle is adventurous author Alexander Fiske-Harrison, will be leading the lightweight eight against rivals Oxford on Saturday. Her prize if they win? A traditional dunking in the Thames.

All my recent forays into the press seem to involve me being written about rather than writing, and being written about as a side note to someone else’s life. At least in this case it is a blood relation, my niece – and goddaughter – Isabella, daughter of my eldest brother Byron, former cavalry officer in the British Army and director of Goldman Sachs and the reason I first took up playing polo. (Ironic that the journalist got in touch with me on the 37th anniversary of our dear late middle brother’s tragic death skiing, the brother by whom I was first introduced to Spain and bullfighting, Jules, about whom Giles Coren wrote so well here and later here – outside paywall – in The Times.)

Screenshot

Isabella was a Queen’s Scholar at Westminster School and is currenly a scholar at Trinity College, Cambridge studying Classics. She narrowly missed her blue for skiing, and now will take it instead for rowing.

Anyway, it is time I stopped riding on the coat tails of others, and the next project I am in print about here, the press, or anywhere else, will do exactly that.

Alexander Fiske-Harrison

Screenshot

There is a famous story about Cary Grant dropping by, unannounced, at the agency that represented him when his agent was out to lunch.This was late in Grant’s career, and the star struck assistant felt she could not leave him out in the waiting room and so let him into the agent’s office. This was why Grant saw a telegram from a notable film producer, whom everyone knew was casting for an important new script, saying simply: “HOW OLD CARY GRANT?” One paid for telegrams by the word, and clearly the producer was asking in terms of suitability for casting for one of the many sorts of films where an ageing Grant played the leading man across from an increasingly younger actress.

Cary Grant & Audrey Hepburn

Grant took out a telegram slip from a draw, and filled out a reply. He left the offices but not before handing the slip to that same starstruck assistant on his way out, saying “send this immedialtey, please.” Which she did. It read, “OLD CARY GRANT FINE. HOW YOU?”

Mr Alexander Fiske-Harrison and The Hon. Antalya Nall-Cain, later Princess of Prussia, at a launch party for Tod’s new line of shoes for Vogue magazine in 2011

In my line of work – if it can be called work – it is not unexpected that I am referenced in the newspapers when ex-girlfriends do something newsworthy. However, tempus fugit and old age creeps up unbeknownst, so I was a little taken aback to find myself cited… if not in the divorce… but when referencing the divorce of the lady formerly known as the Hon. Antalya Nall-Cain.

It seems her marriage to a great, great grandson of Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany had come to an end. What I had to do with any of this given that we parted ways over a dozen years ago, and hadn’t met in at least a decade, I had no idea. When we last met, at an Iranian friend’s apartment opposite my favourite restaurant, Cambio de Tercio, I also met him, and they seemed a happy couple.

DAILY MAIL EDEN CONFIDENTIAL: Lord Brocket daughter’s fairytale marriage to prince falls apart By RICHARD EDEN Published: 22:06 BST, 7 March 2025 “On the face of it, she was born into immense privilege – the daughter of an ebullient peer who was in possession of an almost unrivalled Ferrari collection, a splendid family seat and a wife of such glamour that she regularly graced the pages of Vogue.”…  “Antalya’s past paramours include Old Etonian bullfighter-turned-author Alexander Fiske-Harrison, 13 years her senior”…

However, although back in my mid-thirties I did not mind when the Daily Mail began publicising my relationship with Antalya by overstating our age difference – saying Talya is 13 years older than me when she is 11 – I feel the need to publicly object when their Hollywood accoutning makes me 50-years-old (I am 48), and alters my insurance premiums for everything from bullfighting to polo.

As I said at the time of our… parting of ways… in my own newspaper of choice, The Daily Telegraph, I have only ever wished Antalya the best, but as for the Daily Mail: if you are going to write about me in a viral media world, and that text is not only reprinted in Condé Nast´s Tatler, but is translated into Spanish and reprinted out here in Spain from ¡Hola! magazine to the national newspaper of record, El Mundo, I have to make the correction.

I am 48. Damn it. And single once more…

Signed,

Alexander Ruper Fiske-Harrison, Esq.

Born Queen Charlotte and Chelsea Hospital, London, on July 22nd, 1976.

(P.S. I also can’t resist noting that the House of Hohenzollern were Kings of Prussia for barely two centuries and Emperors of Germany for less than fifty years, making them parvenus in royal circiles, in comparison to my friends from the House of Wettin, from my late friend Con to my very alive friend Boris, from Saxe-Weimar to Saxe-Coburg.)

(P.P.S. And the newspapers have been speculating about my private life since The Daily Telegraph ran this article about another jailed Old Etonian whose daughter I dated, in this case not former Army officer, Lord Brocket, but rather former Cabinet Minister Jonathan Aitken the same month she graced Condé Nast´s GQ magazine in 2002, a few years before when the same editorial stable´s Tatler ran the susequent feature on me in 2008.)

The Daily Telegraph, dated Friday, February 22, 2002: Peterborough Aitken fille casts caution to the wind Alexandra Aitken’s semi-naked poses for GQ magazine were only the first steps in her campaign to emerge from the shadow of her father, Jonathan. For Peterborough can reveal that Ali’s next project is a provocative short film, entitled The Pantomime, for which she has been cast – in the lead role – as a promiscuous young woman caught up in a love triangle. “It’s causing a lot of laughs in the film industry,” says my mole. The film’s writer, Alexander Fiske-Harrison, is rumoured to be going out with Ali and he’s cast himself in the sex scenes. Ali herself maintains that it’s strictly professional. “We are just good friends,” she insists. “I’m not going to be going naked, either,” Alexander adds, even as he blushes. “He’s written a really illustrative piece about how we all say one thing and do another,” says Daddy’s girl. [Image caption:] Item? Alexandra Aitken and Alexander Fiske-Harrison What does he think of it all? “I’ve told him that it’s a very challenging part, as it focuses on honesty and how deceit breeds more deceit,” she continues without a smile. “I’m afraid he’s not exactly thrilled about it. He told me there are enough thespians in the family and he’s afraid that I’m not going to get any work.”

TATLER
artscene drama
Alexander Fiske-Harrison in the film The Seer with actress Irena Hoffman.
Hottie ahoy!
Meet Alexander the Great at acting/writing/being sexy
Alexander Fiske-Harrison knows how to grab an audience’s attention. “You need sex and death. Give me blood and seminal fluid,” says this 31-year-old dramatist/actor as he discusses his new play The Pendulum, a tragedy set in 19th-century Vienna. Inspired by a group of philosophers called the Vienna Circle, it focuses on a young Austrian cavalry officer, also played by Fiske-Harrison, and his fiancée, a Jewish painter. For the role he drew on his own lovelife, which has included a five-year relationship and a broken engagement. “I’ve had a few break-ups recently,” he says. “So I thought, ‘I can bring anger and jealousy to this.’” Henry Conway, son of disgraced politician Derek Conway, is doing the costumes, even though Fiske-Harrison jokes he’s “lost the plot.”
Xander was brought up in Belgravia with his two brothers by his stockbroker father and an Australian sculptress mother. His stage career started at Eton – not very promisingly. “I was a blind soldier in A Penny for a Song by John Whiting. The girl, my love interest, was played by a boy in the year below. That was the last time I acted at Eton. I said to myself, ‘Unless there’s a real girl…’ I mean, that’s why you do it.” But he still got noticed – he set a record by being sent to the headmaster 68 times. He acted once more while studying PPE at Oxford. “I was being directed by my friend Hugh Dancy but he was not a good director. I hated it. I never acted at Oxford again.”
He went on to win the Oxford New Writing Prize for a play called The Death of an Atheist, which he describes as “very heartfelt and intense.” He ascribes the emotional aspects of his work to the death of his brother Jules at 18 in a skiing accident: “I’ve always thought it led to a lot of my writing. You grow out of it – there’s no pain now when thinking about it – but I think it rotates the brain a few degrees towards the tragic.” Determined to write a novel, he headed to the Moroccan Sahara (“a dustbowl hellhole!”) for three months. “I’d go on camel rides to the dunes then come back and write about my experiences. I knew nothing about it, that life except that I was going slightly mad in the desert and camels aren’t very nice. Tons of people were interested but I couldn’t finish it because it was, like, this epic and I was 21.”
After a stint at the Financial Times weekend magazine and a brief spell at his dad’s firm (which he hated), he went to New York to study method acting at the Stella Adler Studio. “They said, ‘How can we rip every nightclub you’ve ever been in out of your head?’” So they cast me as a gay Mormon lawyer from Utah, in Tony Kushner’s Angels in America. This training, as well as his looks, charm and intelligence, got him film work. He played an Italian detective in last year’s The Seer and then a father whose child disappears in the forthcoming Escape.
Fiske-Harrison is a self-confessed party animal: “At Oxford I was in all the very disreputable societies, such as the Assassins, Piers Gaveston and the GridIron.” A regular on the London club scene with Jacobi Anstruther-Gough-Calthorpe, Henry Conway and Ali Aitken, he is passionate about dancing, especially flamenco and tango, but holds back on the booze. “I find it kills my creative spark. Sometimes I’d have a glass of wine and this amazing stuff came out. Then I’d have a second and even better stuff came out. Third glass – absolute rubbish.” Thankfully, his writing is now attempted only when sober.
Harriet Compston
The Pendulum runs until 28 June at Jermyn Street Theatre, Jermyn Street, SW1 (tel: 020 7287 2875).
[Inset photo caption:]
On stage with the actress Susanne Gschwendtner
[Inset red text:]
He was sent to the head 68 times – a record

Queen Charlotte’s Maternity Hospital as it was in 1976