I miss Issie. I am waiting outside in the Orangerie in the Parc de St-Cloud, in Paris, where the Chanel show is about to begin. The incessant driving rain, the clouds, thick, and black with purpose, as another deluge begins. The huge white bright spotlights shining undiminished give a silvery magnificence to the scene. The
Monday What a day! Just back from Service of Thanksgiving in the All-Faiths-And-None Prayer Room. Jed read an excerpt from Franklin D. Roosevelt’s inaugural speech about having nothing to fear but fear itself (I thought J.F.K. said that but never mind). It was v moving. Just like the American people in 1933 the citizens of
Hong Kong It is very good to be back. So good that I can ignore the horror of the summer weather. The humidity suffocates and is only relieved by sudden and violent downpours. But these are minor irritations in a city that is back to its best. The economy booms and the shops and restaurants
Monday Have drawn up shortlist of potential husbands. It is my Number One Priority to end my single status asap now that Being Married is official Conservative policy — not to mention a jolly good way of making a bit of extra cash from the super tax breaks! (£3,000 a year would cover my congestion
Washington High tea with George Bush in the Oval Office. Polite but tough questioning on my book. He tells me how much he’s enjoyed reading it. Next stop, the wonderfully counter-counter-cultural bowling alley with Dick Cheney, flanked by Francis Fukuyama, author of The End of History. They tell me how much they’ve enjoyed my book.
Could do without the sort of nonsense I had to deal with this evening. Phone rang in middle of the big announcement and the operator said: ‘Call from Newcastle. Will you accept the charges?’ Monday Could do without the sort of nonsense I had to deal with this evening. Phone rang in middle of the
Monday Horrid, horrid. It’s all election war footing and aggression and shouting round here. Jed has decided we are ‘too nice’. Says he is going to toughen us up and turn us into ‘attack dogs’. (Am prepared to do almost anything for Dave. But the concept of turning me and the girls into dogs, ‘attack’
Hong Kong They have moved the Star Ferry. How could they move the Star Ferry? The view of the harbour from my room at the Ritz-Carlton should be one of the great sights of Asia. But it is a building site of land being messily reclaimed and another corner of the ‘perfumed’ harbour getting paved
Monday A day of high drama. Heart-stopping parliamentary meeting at which Dave put the party on stand-by for an election in October… THIS October! Ordered everyone to start digging for dirt on Gordon. This would mean certain political death for those supplying the dirt when the Great Clunking Fist found out. Nevertheless it was our
I have long thought there is no analogy quite so perfect for the process of writing a book as childbirth. There is the initial stage when it’s little more than a fond idea, until you sell it to the publisher. The months of research as the deadline marches inexorably nearer, the periodic panic during that
Monday Disaster. Dave’s big policy announcement on illegal logging totally ruined by rogue spelling error and I’m to blame. Can’t believe I could be so stupid as to add a letter ‘b’ by mistake. Nigel says I must have done it on purpose. Jed says my ‘Inner Moderniser’ did it subliminally. Either way we now
Global publishing is a confusing business. Because my book on Princess Diana is being published simultaneously in America, England and Germany (the French, in their languid way, are doing it in September, après la rentrée), the challenge to the author is to be Zelig. One nice surprise is that the Germans are mad for Diana
MONDAY I wish everyone would just calm down. It’s like the inside of Mr Willetts’s smaller brain (the one he used for grammar schools) around here. Don’t see why everyone is hysterical just because we are getting a new Director of Comms. So Gary’s from Essex and used to be a tabloid newspaper editor. It
A concert, ‘Raise the Roof’, at St James’s Church, Piccadilly, was held last month. We raised almost £30,000 with a musical evening and readings by Diana Rigg, Anthony Andrews, Edward Fox and John Standing. Edward read a piece about Anthony Ashley Cooper, seventh Earl of Shaftesbury. He was a great benefactor of the poor in
MONDAY Jed away for three weeks on horseback safari in Botswana and nobody knows who’s in charge. Nigel says it’s The Three Georges, Poppy reckons it’s Mr Maude, Wonky Tom says we ought to ring Sam — she’s bound to know what to do (‘All right, my darlin’, getcha notebook out…’). We will have to
I don’t keep a diary any more, having decided that my past efforts contained too much that was either libellous or trite. However, leafing through a collection of oldies this week I noted one pertinent item, namely that when the National Insurance scheme was launched in July 1948, Bevan’s vision was greeted with mixed feelings
Sunday Most exciting day ever: had to activate the Early Warning System! First time it’s been done!! I knew as soon as I saw the headlines on grammar schools that I would have to do it. I panicked at first, but remembered my training. I broke the glass on the Emergency Point and took out
This week I’m going to the Hay-on-Way literary festival to take part in a discussion following the showing of a documentary made for BBC4 by Charlie Russell. It’s called The Last Year of my Life. Mine, that is. It was filmed over the past three years, and began because I mentioned that my parents, my
MONDAY Am in severe shock. Just put the phone down from the Labour press office. Someone called ‘Bev’ rang to say she had found 15 inaccuracies in stories we briefed to the papers this weekend, including five major ‘porkers’ about Gordon’s economic record. She was v loud and bossy and went on and on about
Stalin and the Rothschilds is one of the more bizarre connections that I discovered while writing a book on the dictator’s early life. Stalin worked for the Rothschilds; he burnt down their refinery and ordered the assassination of their managing director — yet later they helped fund Lenin and Stalin. There were always rumours, but