I was sorry to read of the death of Harry Brewster at the age of 90. Harry was one of the last representatives of what has been described as "that expatriate culture which, from the 18th century onwards, so enhanced the profile of Florence as one of the sacred places of European art".

Ah, Firenze. Ah, Harry. Qual d'Eugania sulle spalle nivea falda, hai puro il cor.

But how well I remember it all, that incomparable expatriate culture, and the golden glow it threw over those Tuscan hills and terraces. Poor old Norman Douglas, poor old Harold Acton, and now poor old Harry Brewster. All that tinkly laughter in those gorgeous Medici villas, all the elegant living in Arcadian splendour, all those delightful (and, if I am to be honest, sometimes exasperating) guests - the many visits of witty Lady Diana Cooper, serene Cole Porter, old garrulous Cecil Beaton, and in later years the brief bright shining moonbeams of poor deluded Stephen Tennant and the doomed Marquis of Bristol. All lights extinguished, one by one.

The writer Jonathan Keates has recalled a trip with Harry Brewster in his later years from his home at the former Minimite convent of San Francesco di Paola outside Florence. They went to visit Sir Harold Acton at his fabulous villa, La Pietra, where they enjoyed "an hour of vintage Actonian waspishness and excellent whisky".

Well, I can vouch for the truth of this, because I enjoyed it too.

Just before Jonathan and Harry arrived, Harold was telling me how he was still upset (insofar as he ever got upset) over the sectors of the press that only ever mentioned him as the Florentine host of the Prince and Princess of Wales in 1985, and not for his more lasting achievements - though naturally he would never speak of these himself. Still, Harold could not but be cheered at the accurate reports that Diana had been regularly moved to giggles by his famous verbal sallies.

Our other two guests that day were Lady Cooper and her chihuahua. We all sat down under the cypress trees on the terrace to a delightful summer repast beginning with chicken livers and tagliatelle bianchi, while a cool marjoram-scented breeze wafted over us on that idyllic Tuscan evening, as we looked out beyond the olive trees and the Venetian statues to the glinting facade of the Duomo in the distance.

The highlight of our conversation was undoubtedly our discussion of the shortlived marriage of Freya Stark and Stewart Perowne. Sir Harold said, and I recall his words so well: "When they married, she thought she'd found Lochinvar. She hoped to be taken out into the desert and ravished. Oh dear! She ordered a double bed, a double bath, a double lavatory . . . "

It was at this point that Lady Diana, stroking her ludicrous little dog, interjected - "Yes, and I could have told her that what she was getting was an old bugger!"

Well, how we laughed.

But even then, we aesthetes - Harry, Sir Harold and myself - could see we were a dying breed. We had charm, of course, but little else, and we all knew our one-time friend Cyril Connolly's infamous dictum about charming people - that they all had something to conceal, usually their total dependence on the appreciation of others.

Cruel as the jest was, we could not pretend it was not apt.

But by then, many of us, including that endearing old fraud Cecil Beaton, were already dead. Harry recalled for our delectation how hard Cecil had worked each morning, slaving away in secret, unshaven and clad only in pyjamas, before assuming the mantle of aesthete and pretending to have done nothing. "He would then emerge, newly shaved and elegantly clad for lunch, looking considerably fresher than the other already shady-chinned guests who had wielded their razors five or six hours before!"

How we laughed again.

So the evening went on, a feast of incomparable food, wine and conversation. And I recall as one of its principal treats the way in which Sir Harold managed to interject the word "Byzantium" into our conversation - more than once, indeed. How he moulded that word, lingered on it, accentuated it, regretfully discarded it while sustaining in the mind the faint suggestion of the perfumed East of our imagination! (Thanks, Lord Lambton.)