In all the recent chatter about the press baron, one group has been silent – his media execs
‘I am not some agent of Russia,” wrote a pained Evgeny Lebedev in one of the newspapers he owns with his father, Alexander, the former Russian spy. “I am not a security risk to this country, which I love.”
And for once, the sheer preposterousness of Lord Evgeny, the most elaborately costumed proprietor in press history, is on his side. Perhaps it’s reading too much John le Carré, but are serious security risks also likely to be party-mad showoffs, enthralled by celebrities, with titles that sound – “Baron Lebedev, of Hampton in the London Borough of Richmond on Thames and of Siberia in the Russian Federation” – as if they were dreamed up by a rather worrying 10-year-old? Though in that respect it might shed some light on an affinity sometimes considered suspect between Lord Siberia and the no less preposterous world king, Boris Johnson, whose determination to ennoble Lebedev has now embarrassed both. Is it impossible that Tuscan parties featuring celebrities and (Rory Stewart was told) “girls”, might, for such men, represent the pinnacle of human achievement?
