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.)

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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

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