Gore Vidal, who was born 100 years ago, had roots in the Irish bog and the Austrian Alps, says Will Lloyd in The New Statesman. And while the writer would go on to become the epitome of the coastal elite, his ancestors were “heartlanders” – Vidal’s grandfather was a populist senator from Oklahoma who was, as Vidal put it (without judgement), “anti-banks, anti-railroad, anti-black and anti-Semitic”. But Gore’s self-image was strictly aristocratic. “I belong to the highest class there is,” he said. “My grandfather, father and I have all been on the cover of Time. That’s all there is. You can’t go any higher in America.” The Vidals were the ruling class; the United States was the family business. “Whenever I want to know what the United States is up to,” he said, “I look into the blackness of my own heart.”

Vidal’s understanding of power was inherently elitist: small groups and charisma counted for more than ideas; individuals generated more real motion than systems; history was no more than a kind of “gossip”. He wanted and expected to be president – from Vidal’s perspective nothing else made sense. He failed, but his birth and breeding gave him access to scenes that careful observers are often barred from. It is from Vidal that we learn Tennessee Williams “commented favourably” on John F Kennedy’s arse, and that Orson Welles patted his stomach “as if it were a dog”. Of Edward VII: “The Duke’s stupidity was of a perfection seldom encountered outside institutions.” F Scott Fitzgerald: “barely literate”. The English: “eccentric Norwegians”. “The trouble with Gore,” Princess Margaret once observed, “is that he wants my sister’s job.” She wasn’t joking.

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