Being a wife has privileges. They’re called in-laws. And it was within that spousal remit that I recently headed to London to attend a splendid dinner at the even more splendid Mansion House hosted by my father-in-law, John Clemence, QPM, a mad-proud Englishman and chairman of the City of London branch of the Royal Society of St George. He wears a white handlebar moustache and favours an Inverness and deerstalker hat, though not at dinner!

The matter of a formal dinner at Mansion House is not without protocol. The house is the official residence of the Lord Mayor of London, the guest of honour. No. Not Boris. He’s the lesser Mayor of London. The Lord Mayor, the right honourable Fiona Woolf, CBE, runs one of the richest, if not the richest, square miles in the entire Commonwealth, and has the distinction of being only the second woman to hold the position since 1189. Yes, that’s right, the year 1189. As my father-in-law points out in his speech, he suspects that ‘being second is not something that she is used to’. He adds he has overheard her call her team the ‘Woolf pack’. He’s a brave man. Woolf is a barrister and former Sheriff of the City.

The Goring hotel is the only place to stay in London for mine. It is the hotel where the commoner formerly known as Kate Middleton spent her last night before marrying into royalty. It also lays claim to the fact that the Queen has hosted her staff Christmas parties in its dining room. The Goring’s manager, Jeremy Goring, is the fourth generation to run the family business. He has great affection for the Queen. One year at the Goring she popped a Christmas cracker and donned its contents; a paper crown! Now that’s something.

The primary aim of The Royal Society of St George is to ‘foster the love of England and to strengthen England and the Commonwealth by spreading the knowledge of English history, traditions and ideals’. I choose not to point out that right now, the English cricket team is indeed doing just that; fostering a love of England by losing the Ashes.

Guests at the Mansion House include lots of right honourables, many lords and several each of judges, sheriffs and aldermen. I note that nearly every woman wears a long gown and gloves with dazzling jewels worn on the outside. I even spy a couple of tiaras. The men are resplendent in white tie (think Lord Grantham of Downton Abbey) and fob watches, and those not bedecked in their finest tails look super snappy in dress uniform. The air, needless to say, is heavy with the scent of mothballs. We toast the Queen — who sends a lovely goodwill message to the 400 guests — Prince Philip, the Duchess of Cornwall and other members of the royal family. Then this: the passing of the Loving Cup, a ritual to remind diners that the act of drinking could, and very well did, end in assassinations in ancient days. Nobody dies tonight, though. The speeches are pleasingly pithy and the evening is a stunning success. The Society chairman, a retired police officer at Scotland Yard who tells terrific tales about hostage incidents, kidnappings and murders, leads the Lord Mayor out of her dining room precisely at 10.20pm.

An aside. I grew up in the salubrious western suburbs of Melbourne with a matriarch at the helm who instilled in my elder brother and me three rules, the first of which was exclusively mine: never iron a shirt for a man. The second was equally practical: never leave a room empty-handed. The third was Catholic and diplomatic: if you can’t say something nice about someone or something, say nothing. After dinner at Mansion House I spent several rewarding days researching for my next book in the archives of the majestic Imperial War Museum and the equally grand Royal College of Surgeons. Then we took the Eurostar from London to Paris. I recall my mother’s third rule. Enough said.

Back in London I head to Earls Court to interview Jonathan Aitken, author of Margaret Thatcher, Power and Personality. Reviews have been strikingly good. Aitken, a marvellous raconteur, inscribes my copy with a wish for ‘every success with your biography of another great leader in his field’. Aitken is, of course, a former Member of Parliament who spent time at Her Majesty’s pleasure for perjury and earned Thatcher’s wrath when he dumped her daughter, Carol, after a three-year courtship. I suspect the latter was the tougher sentence.

We all know the English are good at tradition. My husband, his brother and their father are all free men of the City of London. Their mother is a free woman. The role is largely symbolic nowadays, but once upon a time free men and women were granted special rights such as the right to drive sheep over London Bridge, the right to bear a sword unsheathed in public, and the right to get stonkered, also in public, without fear of arrest. I particularly like the last one as The Goring has a very civilised 24-hour bar for in-house guests.

When in London, the Australian journey these days surely must include a stroll by the Ecuadorian embassy, the temporary home and gilded cage of Julian Assange. To explain our presence, I tell one of the Bobbies pulling guard duty that Assange is ‘one of ours’ before adding, ‘Not that we want him back’. He nods knowingly then tells me this: Assange has a 24/7 retinue of London’s finest watching him; ten officers work in 12-hour shifts, five on for two hours, then they switch. I suggest it’s an expense London could well do without. ‘A bloody waste, it is, Missus,’ he replies. ‘Like our cricket team.’ This time, I nod, knowingly.