I’ll be jumping off a mountain to dangle in the air. As if I were in a cable car – but without being in one. I must be certifiable. I sleep fitfully in a cold sweat of anticipation – thinking about this, my first paragliding flight. Will I bump into a bird or electric cable? Who but a lunatic flies with just a parachute and Swiss instructor for company? Then dawn breaks and the snow-peaked mountains opposite my bedroom window change hues of blues obligingly, like an al fresco cinema show.

We’re staying in the Walig Hut – the most expensive shack on the planet – near Gstaad, Switzerland.

It’s set above Gsteig at 5000 ft, a place where the Alps rise dramatically and the air is fresh as Listerine. Originally a 1786 summer home to farmers bringing their cattle to nearby pastures, it’s 30 chauffeured-Mercedes-minutes from Gstaad. (Much of it behind cows refusing to do the right thing and just turn into steaks.)

The Walig Hut offers intermittent solar-powered electricity, an outside latrine and no shower. And it costs £1150 (CHF 1600) a night for up to two adults and two children, dinner and drinks included. It’s possibly frequented by women like the Beast of Wildenstein, men who smoke plump cigars and people who wear diamond-encrusted boots.

It belongs to the Gstaad Palace, one of the world’s leading hotels. Most of its guests are people up for a night or meal from the hotel– one-time haunt of Liz Taylor, Roger Moore, Princess Di and Grace Kelly. But you don’t have to be a Palace guest to stay in this humble wooden dwelling.

And why would we overnight here? Its real lure is the mountain highs. The views over the Saanenland. The hikes. A sky that fills with a million stars.

Inside, the hut is more Ralph Lauren than impecunious farmer – with two bedrooms, luxury duvets and sheepskins strewn over chairs. Plus antique farm implements and red geraniums on the sills. It’s enough to make anyone don their dirndl.

A mountain stream doubles as a fridge. There’s no Internet, fax or phone reception. We collect mountain water, stoke the log fire and boil water on a wood-burning stove. But only because we don’t want our manservant to do it.

To save on too much reality, the Palace’s regal touch is bought to the hut. Its charming head waiter, Mauritzio, personally serves us a three-course meal of smoked hams and fruit flans. Afterwards, Mauritzio scarpers off and leaves us in a hut where the silence is so loud, it rings in our ears. And then I have that fitful sleep.

The real point of even of being in Switzerland is to go paragliding with instructor Thomas Rast. So now we drive down the mountain and up another to where this charming and enthusiastic man is waiting. Half an hour is all it takes from the comfort of the hut to the discomfort of the mountain. Am I terrified? Almost fainting at the prospect of dangling at a height of 500m? Yes. But all too soon we’re paragliding, floating peacefully above mountainous beauty.

Then descending over chalets surrounded by dahlias and streets clean enough to eat raclette off. Enjoying the silence. The sun shines, the trees sway gently below, the wind whistles gently. It’s unforgettable. And a fabulous first.

OK, I won’t do it again. I suffer from vertigo. But it’s definitely one of those things to do before you die. As for our accommodation, it fulfils the need for escape and some may like it hut. But I’m more to the Palace born.

Once the Brits thought that professional style advice was best left to Desperate Housewives and Mad Men. Americans, in other words. Women in the UK ran a mile from beauty consultants wearing concrete-mix makeup and men legged it at the idea of skin care, moob jobs or a personal stylist. We women preferred instead to be amateurish in our clothes purchases – going for the DIY approach – or, in the case of men, electing to be, well, man-ish. But now that’s all changed and the stylish and wannabe cool are hiring Annabel Hodin, erstwhile model (talent spotted by US Vogue’s Anna Wintour) and the fashion editors’ favourite. She is the ne plus ultra of stylists.

Annabel offers a bespoke service, from £350 for an initial consultation to meet you and look at your present wardrobe and discuss editing and/or shopping and budget. She arrives punctually for my appointment – sporting model’s face and figure and Celine–style outfit. “I like clean lines,” she explains. (Wear your best knickers when you see her – you’ll be trying on your clothes. And chucking a lot out!) With frankness and a twinkle in her eye, she goes through my clothes, jewellery, makeup….. And then through my husband Adrian’s wardrobe (albeit with him as an additional consultation on a different day).

It’s an epiphany. I put on my favourite coat. “It’s too angular for you,” she says. “Not doing you any favours.” I slip on a dress. “It’s furnishing fabric,” she says, but tactfully. During Adrian’s appointment later, it is suggested that he jettison several particularly unattractive garments that he clearly inherited from Fred Flinstone. Annabel’s directness gets results. In between doing the wardrobe clear-out, she’s giving tips: where to get the perfect eyebrow created (“Threading gives too harsh a look”), best his ‘n’ her laser hair removal (Joanne Evans at Kensington’s Medical Rooms), brilliant facialist (Vaishaly), where to get great grooming or even Bro-tox (Botox for him).

As we do the wardrobe exploration, Annabel highlights my good points. Perfect Fifties silhouette and beautiful, sculptural face, since you ask. “So keeping to simple, classic lines will enhance your natural look. Which is why,” she reveals, “I’m editing out the masculine shapes….” She takes notes and sketches what I’m keeping. “In case you call and say I need something to go with Y..” (Later, I tell her I’m going to Marylebone. When I’m standing in queue to buy some fish, I get a text. She offers phone support as part of a follow-up package. ‘Remember to go to Matches to look at the plum and taupe sandals,’ it reads. ‘Very chic.’ Equally Adrian receives a timely and useful text reminder of a garment he actually needs – rather than an impulse buy – when he’s in the middle of having a quick peek at wish-he-could-afford-them cars in a Knightsbridge showroom).

Annabel identifies a person’s style and is great on colour, proportions and what’s age appropriate. For me: out with tagliatelle straps and shoes that look like a dead lizard – and that’s just for starters. For him: out with the shirts that make his complexion look as if he’s feeling sea-sick. “I want to help you assess how to convey – with what you wear – the message you wish to get across about who you are,” she explains. “We’re going to build a capsule wardrobe of 20 or so classic pieces which you can accessorise for work or play – a look that fits your life.”

We pull all the pieces out of my schizoid wardrobe – a combo of bloke-ish tailoring and boho-not-chic. Over our morning together, Annabel does what she calls an ‘edit’ – but which I’d call a chic cull. She’s aiming with me more for Grace Kelly meets ’50s Dior than my series of sales oopsies and unmatching separates. (And for him? Well, hmm, a sort of Colin Firth in Tom Ford’s Single Man look.) “You’ve wasted tons of cash buying the wrong things,” she says. “Getting your look right saves time and energy and money.” (Until now, we have both considered ourselves to be fairly stylish and well-groomed!) “You’ve certainly got a good eye,” she continues. “It would take a one-day shop for you to have a fabulous wardrobe and feel incredible too. Cut out buying uncordinated items on a whim. The secret to great style is an uncluttered wardrobe full of key pieces that you love and staples that work.”

We put aside clothes that are too small, too cheap or never worn (mostly sale) mistakes. Things that I’ve been holding onto because I wore them at my 21st/my brother’s weddings/on my first date. High fashion that is dated. Garments that are tired or marked. Hey, even a fair amount of Prada and Pucci goes to that clothes pile in the sky. But apparently we wear barely 20% of our wardrobes; and streamlining, well it’s just so very now, isn’t it?

After her phenomenally efficient edit, I have a thin wardrobe (and Adrian has piles ready to adorn the rails of a second-hand shop that sells Gucci. Get ye there quickly). Then Annabel puts my clothes into outfits to see what’s missing, identifies the gaps in my remaining material possessions and we set out to fill them. “You should never go shopping unless you are looking for something specific,” she counsels wisely.

Ah, shopping. If you’ve got more pressing things to do (i.e. take out your speed boat/go sailing/take your Ferrari out for a whirl) than traipse around fashion boutiques, then it’s worth hiring someone like Annabel. She already knows precisely what shops have in stock, understands what suits you better than you know yourself, and knows where to find everything – whether it be a big name designer or high street – because she researches so very well.

Our first stop is Browns, where we get treated like royalty and pick up Hollywood dresses, statement shoes and Norma Kamali. “Delicious costume colours,” says Annabel appreciatively. (His first stop is Selfridges. Under her expert gaze, he buys a zillion-ply cashmere jacket, which costs more than ten arms and ten legs. “Quality over quantity,” says Annabel, ever the sartorial economist. “It’s better to buy fewer and better”.) Then there’s Matches for everything under the sartorial sun, and more.

We proceed to Joseph (St John’s Wood), where we’re helped by the indefatigable Elly. “They’re great at doing designer inspired looks, at a snip of the price,” explains Annabel. “All the fashion editors go there.” Morphing into a fashion editor, I leave with a few carefully selected items: cropped trousers, Prada lookalikes, pieces of wonderfulness at reasonable prices. But it doesn’t stop there. Soon Annabel has also kitted me out in retro sunglasses from Cutler & Gross – which look better than anything I’ve ever selected; and shoes in enough colours to make a paint chart from Tod’s in Bond Street – helped by manager Simone Artuso. (There’s nothing he doesn’t know about feet and handbags.)

There are financial benefits to all this. I save days of trudging around stores like a demented bargain hunter simply in order to waste lots of money on ill-fitting, mismatched outfits in styles that suit Victoria Beckham or Kate Middleton. Annabel insists on buying key pieces that will last. “The simpler the cut, the more timeless it is.” She avoids cheap fabrics, cheap cuts and cheap colours. “Select something,” she explains, “that is or looks expensive and timeless.”

She goes for multiple buys. Not exactly two for the price of one. And not quite stack ’em high and buy ’em low. But you get the gist. Who ever thought of splashing out on more than one pair of the same trousers? Not me. “It saves time later,” she explains. “If it’s a classic, you can have it in more than one colour.” Sales? “Only if you already know it’s the right size and colour. But I prefer Refund Shopping – if you are at all unsure and alone – only go where they’ll reimburse.”

For the first time in my life, I end up with what the cogniscenti call ‘a capsule wardrobe’ that works and can be updated (inexpensively) with accessories. “It’ll take you just minutes to pack whenever you go away,” she says reassuringly, “because everything cross coordinates.” As for Adrian, he’s now got a fabbo closet and has followed the Annabel Plan For Looking Good Inside and Out – raiding her little black book secrets for everything from how to get naturally white teeth (“Super white is too American”) to where to get the best massage in town.

Annabel has a loyal following including ever increasing numbers of male clients. “They want the makeovers, grooming and tips they’ve seen women get,” she explains. “They know that successful men look successful, and they want the transformation they’ve seen in a George Clooney or Daniel Craig. A smart, well-chosen suit won’t get you the job or the partner – but it helps.” It is, she adds, less about fashion than style.

“When I’m dressed right, I look the part, feel more confident and do better,” explains a bond trader friend, later. “But you have to get the guys over a bottle of Crystal before they’ll admit seeing Annabel – unless they have lots of public appearances. Hell, who wants to admit they cannot dress themselves?!”

During these times when people are tightening their (Louis Vuitton) belts, Annabel has seen a ten per cent rise in business. She’s not someone you want in tough times, she’s someone you need. She’s the person who simplifies life. The one who helps women/fellas get or keep their guys/babes/jobs.

In the autumn, she’s launching a service specifically for well-heeled Americans visiting London. “To give them the unexpected style accent that the Brits do so well,” she explains. Barack Obama? He could already be one of hers, he’s so well dressed. “Well, is he?” I ask. She smiles.

As for me, she’s worth her weight in clothes that I chucked out. It’s (almost) the best money I’ve ever spent – making everything work in a different way and creating a functional wardrobe. Wherever I go, people tell me now how fabulous I look. “Annabel,” I reply knowingly. Do you remember what Carrie Fisher wrote in Postcards from the Edge? ‘The only clothes I like are the ones I’m about to buy.’ For the first time in my life, the only clothes I like are the ones I’ve just bought. And my Mr Fisher feels the same way too.

There’s an area so desirable that the masters of the universe are snapping up islands and peninsulas there. The new, must-buy or must-visit place for the richest men on earth is the Ionian. So it’s bye-bye to St Trop, Tuscany and the Hamptons and hello to Meganisi – an Ionian island where there’s no tourist infrastructure and which only even got mains water and electricity in the Eighties. Are you surprised that that’s where the super-wealthy are going?

Well, listen up. If you already own enough camels, Chelsea barracks, Qatar and Al Jazeera, what would you spend your oil money on next? Ionian islands, naturally. In May, the emir of Qatar bought six islands just two miles from Ithaca. (Remember your Homer? Incidentally, Ithaca is also where designer Marc Newson is building a house.) The Sheikh’s islands include Oxia – roughly 20 nautical miles from Meganisi and the largest is 1200 acres – and cost a mere £7.35 million. They’re uninhabited and he fell upon them when he moored his superyacht nearby.

In April 2013, Aristotle Onassis’s granddaughter, Athina Onassis Roussel, sold a 99-year lease on Skorpios – another private island in the Ionian Sea. It went for a snip at £100 million – fortunately the lavish pink villa that the late shipping buhzillionaire Aristotle Onassis built for Jackie O and the nearby islet of Sparti were also included in the sale. The happy purchaser is Ekaterina Rybolovleva, 24, daughter of Russian billionaire businessman Dmitry Rybolovlev. (The potash man/owner of AS Monaco FC who has a fortune estimated by Forbes at $9 billion.)

British billionaire banker Lord Rothschild also caught the bug for the region by holidaying in Kensington-on-Sea, as his bit of Corfu is now known. Now he’s snapped up 8km of Meganisi – roughly 3500 acres of a peninsula – and the neighbouring 200-acre island of Kythnos. Roman Abramovich and sculptor Anish Kapoor are both keen to build homes on Lord R’s Meganisi estate. Enough said. You can’t get cooler than Kapoor.

History is repeating itself. Onassis could have bought anywhere in the galaxy – and snapped up Skorpios. Niarchos bought Spetsopoula, a small island off Spetsai. Fifty years later, the diamond-encrusted wheel has turned full circle – this little spot in the Ionian is turning again into the epicentre of the jet-set world.

Now Tom Hanks, Spielberg, Abramovich, Bill Gates and Madonna cruise its waters on super yachts – the £200,000 to £700,000-a-week type. Little wonder. It’s one of the lovelier places in the universe (or certainly Europe) for sailing.

And what of Meganisi, the place that Lord R has selected as his little bit of paradise? (Or Tafion as the island was known in the Odyssey.) It’s where Aristotle Onassis visited in the Sixties, alongside Maria Callas, Winston Churchill, and Jackie O – who went for ouzo and appetizers at the local tavernas in Vathy.

Go to Meganisi and you’ll find a place lost in time. You’ll reach it by boat from Nidri, passing Skorpios on the way. It’s small (just 9 sq km) with just 1041 inhabitants. It is little developed and is home to a lot of sheep and olive trees. Not hooked yet? Ah, but you will be.

The island is as naturally beautiful, secluded and unspoiled as it gets – one of the great and untouched parts of Greece. There are pebble beaches and ones like finest sugar crystals and waters so clear you can see forever, hidden bays and enough privacy to deter even the most determined paparazzi. There are wild green valleys, steep cliffs honeycombed with caves only accessible by boats, secret coves and ooh-ah views from the top of Lord R’s peninsula over to the mainland. The locals are also incredibly friendly – call it ‘philoxenia’ (friendliness to strangers)….they do.

The most wow! villas weren’t available before for rental. But because of the crisis, top properties are coming onto the open market. Alexandros Matsukis – director of Ionian & Aegean Island Holidays and market leader in renting out villas on the sort of islands on which the big boys have set their sights – is picking up the best. His villas currently have locations that would turn Zeus green with envy, with panoramic views over the endless sea and direct access to almost-private beaches. Book for next year, and Matsukis will be offering ones with splendid interiors, great quality builds and fabbo infinity pools too.

So get there. Go sailing on the aquamarine sea. Take out a speed boat. Whizz around the narrow traffic-free lanes. Sit in a taverna sipping Retsina. See for yourself why Giorgio Armani, Bill Gates and Madonna have been scrambling to buy in the region. And why party time is coming there again.

This is the story of the Marquess, the Old Masters and the Bentley. The tale of my bravely blazing the trail for masterpieces by Van Dyck, Rubens and Murillo to be returned from Russia to Norfolk 234 years after Catherine the Great bought them in a sale that caused national outcry in Britain.

It’s a story of me and my trusty Mulsanne intrepidly leading the way from the Hermitage State Museum, St Petersburg, across thousands of miles of frozen terrain to Houghton Hall, Norfolk – and there, in their original home, the grandest of stately piles, to await the arrival of the priceless collection of paintings that was originally housed there and belonged to Britain’s first PM, Sir Robert Walpole. Except I cheated a little.

Reader, I had planned to do this long drive (1868 miles behind the wheel through Latvia, Lithuania etc.). Honest. But then to circumvent a billion-hour wait at the Estonian border crossing, monotonous days of unspectacular scenery of the northern European plains and USSR-size piles of bureaucratic papers, I took the plane from St Petersburg and then drove from Heathrow to Houghton.

So instead this is now a far more thrilling story – about the car made in Heaven and finished off in Crewe: the Mulsanne. After all, who needs to read about endless roads, blizzards and Russian forests when you could be thinking about a vehicle with TVs in its headrests and veneer tables for champagne flutes?

So we can pass quickly over the W hotel in St Petersburg with its clientele of Russian twigs in spray-on dresses. There! Done. And gloss over the joys of that city’s grand apricot palaces and orthodox churches by the frozen Neva River on which people were walking. We need also reflect only fleetingly on my private visit to the Hermitage – with its three million Michelangelos, Picassos etc. – a breathtaking place where it would take 11 years to see everything, spending just one minute before each exhibit.

Indeed, the only really important thing about St Petersburg was that I was chauffeured in a Mulsanne. Twice when we stopped in the city, passers-by gawped at and photographed our palace on wheels. You think it’s cor! from the outside – well, you should be in here, I wanted to cry. It glides, it purrs and it smells so good I want to bottle it (leather and veneer); there are acres of seats – ones that massage/warm to perfection and probably serve vodka; vanity mirrors for applying that slick of Dior lipstick; soft- shut doors; and a Bentley designed phone. That’s Russia done then.

We can also dispense hastily with British sights, including my stupendous private visit to the fine Palladian house that is Houghton. And forget my meeting with the 7th Marquess of Cholmondley – its current occupant, the country’s most important peer and who has secured 70 of Sir Robert Walpole’s best pictures back from Russia. And disregard the William Kent décor there being returned to its splendid original 18th century specifications.

All that matters is that I drove to Norfolk in a Mulsanne. A motor that goes nought to seriously fast in a nanosecond; with suspension better than any bed; and boasting special specifications – like polished aluminium wheels (£13,410) and sunroof. When I rested a while, I had at my fingertips its bespoke silver tumblers and ashtrays. And a Naim for Bentley sound system. Quite some trip. But with this car, every journey is an event.