For the New York and Washington great and good who loved the company of wealth and power, all that glitters is no longer gold

Many years ago, I went to a party in central London thrown by a host known for curating interesting and heavyweight guest lists and, on entering, encountered David Irving, the disgraced historian and Holocaust denier. As a marker of social pariahdom, Holocaust denial is up there with – or perhaps even more potent than – a conviction for sex offences, and I turned around and walked out; not through any particular moral superiority, but because I thought “notoriety” as a criteria for inclusion on a guest list was stupid and offensive. As I left, I remember looking across the room at the host and thinking: you silly bloody bint, I’m embarrassed for you.

I thought about that party and Irving this week while reading, with grim amusement, the absolute scramble currently under way in the US among media and other public figures seeking to explain, justify, downplay and generally paddle away as fast as they can from their social interactions with Jeffrey Epstein. I’m not talking about the men alleged to have joined the late paedophile in abusing trafficked girls, but rather the apparently endless list of notable figures – mostly in New York, but also reaching down to Washington DC, and across America’s Ivy League campuses – who enjoyed his hospitality, appeared with him at parties, and exchanged cordial emails with the man long after his true nature was known. As the Senate voted this week to release the Epstein files, the chorus of “we didn’t know!” from certain corners grew so loud it might’ve been Germany in 1946.

Emma Brockes is a Guardian columnist

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