Michael Dobbs

Diary – 28 April 2016

Plus: Ignorance on Europe, rubbish on Olympus, political correctness on campus

I’m a lucky man. My novel House of Cards transformed my life, yet I wrote it almost by accident nearly 30 years ago. It wasn’t intended to be anything other than a hobby but thanks to the limitless skills of Kevin Spacey and Robin Wright, backed by the reach of Netflix, it now spans the globe. We’re into our fourth season, preparing the fifth, but it never ceases to surprise. A little while ago during his official visit to Britain I was invited to meet President Xi of China. In order to mark the occasion I decided to give him an original and now rather rare hardback copy of the book. He looked at it perplexed. ‘What,’ he said, ‘you have House of Cards in this country, too?’

I played dirty the other night after dinner. We were all fuelled by quantities of mind-liberating claret, so I asked the others to name their MEPs. Whoops. Utterly clueless. One guest argued that Brexit would leave us much less safe, so I was a real shit and asked if he could name the EU’s foreign minister. No idea. (Actually she’s Federica Mogherini from Italy. Feel any safer now?) There’s something else no one was aware of. Almost every government in the EU up for re-election over the past seven years has been thrown out by voters — France, Italy, Spain, Greece, Portugal, Poland, Ireland, on and on, even the coalition government here. Everyone except the government in Brussels, of course. For some reason that’s still there. Elitism perfected. I think that’s pretty unsafe, too.

Greece has a special place in my heart. I’ve just come back from a trip in search of ancient ruins, and the most magical moment was an early morning on Mount Olympus where, surrounded by a sea of wild spring flowers, I ran the length of the athletics track in the original Olympic stadium.

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