There can be few foreign cities where the Spectator, Times and Telegraph are more widely read than Cape Town. In a queue where I waited before coming home this week, readers volunteered to me – a columnist whom they recognised – their thoughts about these journals, their contents and their columnists.
I love Cape Town but it’s not Africa. Along with Nairobi it’s perhaps the African city where white English people could now most easily imagine settling or retiring; but, though visits are always pleasant, I can never quite escape a nagging feeling that something’s not quite right about this lively, wealthy, cultured city in its breathtaking setting – and I’m not just talking about the appalling black slums you pass as you drive to or from the airport. White settlers from across sub-Saharan Africa – those who do not end up in Perth in Australia – often end up there but (to me) to resort to Cape Town represents a kind of retreat from Africa.
That said, there’s no better, nicer or more comfortable place from which to start discovering the southern part of the continent. We stayed (and this was no freebie – we paid full whack throughout) at an absolutely charming little ‘boutique’ hotel, Derwent House, near the leafy fringes of the city as the slope upward to Table Mountain steepens.
