The history lesson of the lost laptop

Updated: 18:00 EST, 14 October 2008

You could still see the relief etched on historian Andrew Roberts's face as he welcomed Lady Thatcher  -  celebrating her 83rd birthday  -  and a host of political and society figures to Sotheby's for the champagne-fuelled launch of his latest book.

Guests who included David Cameron, Princess Michael of Kent and Countess Spencer  -  narrowly avoiding her soon-to-be ex-husband Charles Spencer  -  were unaware of the remarkable story behind the book's publication.

For it involved the saga of yet another missing laptop  -  Roberts's personal computer on which he had typed the only copy of his 350,000-word military history, Masters And Commanders.

He left it in a taxi and got it back only because of some old world honesty that  -  sadly  -  is in marked contrast to so much of modern life.

For Roberts, 45, panic set in the moment he stood on the doorstep of his Belgravia home when, minus the laptop, he realised that three years of research was fast disappearing into the traffic of Eaton Square.

This is where his luck changed. For the next fare in the taxi was banker Campbell Gordon, who, spotting the laptop, asked the driver where he had dropped his previous passenger.

Instead of handing it over to the cabbie or taking it to a police station, Mr Gordon instructed the driver to head back to the street where he had left Roberts. Just 40 minutes later, the author was reunited with the precious cargo.

'I can never thank him enough,' Roberts tells me. 'I have thanked him in the book's
acknowledgements and next week I am taking him to Brooks's club for lunch.'

I can reveal that the writer owes his good fortune to the fact that Mr Gordon is a history fan who has read all Roberts's books.

He had hailed the cab in Mayfair and, opening the laptop to find the name of its owner, read a passage about Lord Halifax.

'I felt sure I must know who this writer was,' Mr Gordon tells me. 'I thought that if I gave it to the driver it would go to the lost property office and the poor owner would never see the laptop again.

'Instead, I asked where he had dropped the fare and instructed him to take me back there.'

The first house he called at was the wrong address, but the owner told him a writer lived opposite. 'Andrew Roberts came to the door and his first words were: "I was just beginning to fret." '

Sir John Major can afford a wry smile as Tony Blair faces a Parliamentary investigation into his dealings with Bernie Ecclestone over Formula One's exemption from the tobacco advertising ban.

In the year before he left Downing Street, Major, I learn, had been asked to meet Ecclestone after senior Tories suggested the multi-millionaire might be willing to make a substantial donation to the party.

'John did not think it was right or proper for him to meet Ecclestone,' says one of Major's ex-ministers. 'As prime minister, he felt it would be inappropriate.'

Bernie later made a £1million donation to Labour ahead of the 1997 election and  -  hey presto!  -  secured his exemption.

Crash, bang, Olga's deal is still on

There's a glimmer of hope in the world's financial meltdown. James Millership, co-founder of Everlands, the global private members club, tells me he has successfully extended the closing date to buy Olga Polizzi's boutique hotel in Devon and is confident he will eventually be able to buy it as planned.

As I revealed, Everlands, which wants to run the 16-bedroom Hotel Endsleigh, near Tavistock, as part of a group of exclusive, invitation-only country clubs, has put down a 10 per cent deposit.

But, as private equity investor James, 39, explains: 'Suddenly, just ten days before we were due to complete the deal, Lehman's, who were providing us with the funding, went bankrupt. It was a surprise, to say the least.'

Refusing to be defeated, he says: 'We are confident we'll be able to re-finance, probably through our own private investors, and we asked Olga to extend the deadline for six months. She's agreed.'

Gripping a silver-topped cane, actress Leslie Ash cut a frail figure as she walked near her Chelsea home yesterday.

Frail: Actress Leslie Ash near her Chelsea home yesterday

The Men Behaving Badly star has been in pain for four years after contracting MSSA, a variant of the hospital superbug MRSA, while being treated for a cracked rib and punctured lung.

Despite recently revealing she was on a regime of painkillers which make her forgetful, she remains resilient.

Last month she returned to the medical world to investigate the rise and rise of plastic surgery for a TV documentary  -  a subject with which she is only too familiar after a 'trout pout' procedure went disastrously wrong.

Only a month ago, Olympic cyclist Chris Hoy was giving centenarian marathon runner Buster Martin tips as he prepared for his first bike race.

At the weekend, the triple Beijing gold-medallist was at Buster's bedside in King's College Hospital after the van cleaner with Pimlico Plumbers fell off his bicycle on the busy A23 in South London.

Buster, who says he is 102, is thought to have hit a kerb and fallen into the road, breaking two ribs and lacerating his kidney. Friends tell me he is recovering well, but has been kept in intensive care for observation because of his age.

Sweet dreams are made of this...

While the rest of the world struggles to hold onto its savings in the global economic crisis, millionaire musician Annie Lennox, 53, has been keenly inspired by the impending recession.

'The recent "western" world economic events have left everyone with that feeling of queasy uncertainty,' muses Annie, the blonder half of the Eurythmics, on her MySpace blog.

'I was thinking about the ancient yin-yang symbol and it really is so perfect. One half of the sphere is black  -  the shadow, negative, masculine. And the other is white  -  light, positive, feminine. That's the condition of life, always polarised opposites in co-existence.

'That's why my songs are always drawn to the major/minor mix. That's what "blues" is all about  -  exquisite pain and sorrow co-existing with beauty and truth.'

Blimey!

PS 

Clarissa Dickson Wright, the heavyweight TV gourmand, says she could never be tempted by a career in politics, despite having once been offered the opportunity by bibulous Labour figure George Brown.

'I once got drunk on a train with George Brown and he said to me "Why don't you become an MEP dear?", patting my knee,' Clarissa tells me.

'I said: "But I'm not a socialist George!" To which he responded: "What's that got to do with it!"

'I have been offered so many seats by so many parties, but one can do so much more outside politics than in it.'