The Dinner Party Equation

Treat it like a math problem and ensure there's a Jamesian heroine in attendance.

Sometimes, a dinner party just works. By which I mean it’s actually fun and interesting, and people gossip, and smoke the odd cigarette, and have interesting conversations, and meet someone new, and well, everyone’s just completely thrilled that they went to that dinner party, and didn’t drop out or be tired or ill or have something ‘crop up’. Anyway, to my utter amazement (such things are never not a surprise somehow) I co-threw one such dinner party last week, and I want to tell you about why it worked and who was there and what everyone gossiped about.

Well, firstly, there’s nothing like a reason to throw a dinner to give the thing a motor. A dinner purely for socialising’s sake, I’m afraid, fills me with dread, unless it’s with friends who are ‘old muckers’, so close that they may as well be family and you can eat with them in your pyjamas, the litmus test. But I digress: I had a good reason to do a dinner and that made it all easier.