The Week

Portrait of the week

Portrait of the Week – 9 November 2002

Mr Iain Duncan Smith noted that ‘a small group of my parliamentary colleagues have decided consciously to undermine my leadership’; he concluded: ‘My message is simple and stark, unite or die.’ His statement came the day after eight Tory MPs defied a three-line whip and voted in favour of a government amendment to the Adoption

Diary

Diary – 9 November 2002

I am in the midst of a tour promoting a book, The Political Animal. Like all journeys in this country, it is almost impossible to travel anywhere with any confidence that you will arrive within a day of your anticipated time. A trip to Norfolk, which ought to have taken three hours, lasted five. The

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GOODBYE, SHAYLER

Besides secret agents themselves, who face assassination should their identities become known, no man can have been more grateful for the existence of the Official Secrets Act than Ian Fleming. Had it been known back in the 1950s that MI5 and MI6 were inhabited not by suave womanisers but by dull paper-shufflers who go home