New York is as boiling as Naples. Yet walking by Central Park after dinner with friends on Fifth, several couples are heading back to their apartments in black tie. One old gent is even strolling back home in evening tails. It looks glamorous and natural in a way it no longer would in our capital. Everyone in New York asks about the knife crime in London. I tell them it won’t be sorted out because we’ve already decided what the causes can’t be.
The next evening I am in conversation before a live audience on Lexington Avenue. It is great fun, and the hugely friendly, mainly young, audience brings some relief. In recent years I have spoken less and less. A few years ago, after the massacre at Charlie Hebdo and various assassination attempts against friends across Europe, the British police advised me not to appear in public or at least not to give advance notice of engagements. None of which is ideal in my line of work. For a time I was a regular ‘surprise guest’, like Joanna Lumley on French and Saunders. Then I locked myself away to write a book, since when I have carefully eased myself back out in front of audiences. In July I’ll be at the O2 Arena in London with Sam Harris and Jordan Peterson. Then I will lock myself away again. Which, to tell the truth, is the best bit.
This is an extract from Douglas Murray's Diary, which appears in this week's Spectator