Innkeeper's Diary Book

Clearly, it does not pay to get on the wrong side of Kit Chapman, the proprietor of The Castle at Taunton. His diary, full of irascible correspondence, acid character sketches and outraged High Tory expostulations, is a formidable work in itself--a candid glimpse into the bizarre and not altogether glamorous world of the fashionable hotelier. Whether he is making up with Gary Rhodes on national television in front of a bored-to-tears Michael Aspel, or steering a Young Conservative slapper away from a bemused Sir Bernard Ingham, Kit Chapman exhibits a great appetite for etiquette, pleasure, good conversation and--well, why not?--the applause of his peers. This is a man who, when he receives a friend's book, turns straight to the index. ("I scored three entries, on a par with the Queen, Rik Mayall, Esther Rantzen and John Redwood; one entry more than Martin Amis, Jeffrey Archer and Robin Day.") Drawn to The Castle by a developed palette and a certain income, Chapman's guests are as varied and eccentric a party as Dante ever interviewed in hell: a surreal cross-section of the great, the good, and the ghastly. Chapman treats them all like royalty, describes hotel inspectors in terms that are practically unrepeatable, and generally indulges in the contradictions of his gargantuan personality. At once irascible businessman and cordial host, Chapman is a gift to satirists but as he says, "I'd rather be remembered than forgotten." No danger of that, then. --Simon IngsRead More