‘Altogether Elsewhere.’ The title page of an unpublished travel book caught my eye during a recent clear-out. The author, Matthew Leeming, was a character who deserved to be famous but somehow never made it. He was imaginative, witty, fearless and greedy – wonderfully greedy. He inherited his father’s ceramics company and ran it for years with great success. He loved being rich. ‘Money,’ he used to say wistfully, ‘eases the pain of being alive.’
To pique women’s interest, he claimed to be off-limits. ‘I’m training for the Catholic priesthood,’ he confided
He invented businesses out of thin air. In Oxford he lived in a neighbourhood called St Clement’s and he created a summer school by printing a ream of luxury notepaper with an imposing letterhead: ‘St Clement’s College, St Clement’s, Oxford.’ He hired a lecture room and gave English lessons to German teenagers who doubtless imagined that they were enrolled at Oxford University. He made a tidy sum and no one complained. Aged 21, he organised a four-man motorbike expedition to China along the silk road. Having led the party to Istanbul, he withdrew while his companions continued eastward across Asia but were halted at the India-China border. The trip was over. Back in London, Leeming prised open the frontier by depositing $20,000 in cash at the Chinese embassy. Or so he alleged.
