In 1975 I travelled as an undergraduate to Egypt, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and finally to Israel. I visited refugee camps and met a Palestinian militant, Bassam Abu Sharif, who had been blinded in one eye by a Mossad parcel bomb. I talked to policymakers in each country and heard a range of Israeli opinion. On
These are very odd times. The project of my life – The Merchant of Venice 1936, which sets Shakespeare’s play in East End London during the rise of Oswald Mosley’s Blackshirts – was postponed because of Covid, but is now alive and kicking. It’s kicking hard. We’re on a ten-week tour and I’ve been moved
On Monday night, still shaken from the weekend’s news, I went to a small dinner in the basement of a charming restaurant in Chancery Lane, with fellow supporters of the charity Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders). The brave MSF doctors and nurses are rather like fire-watchers in their turrets, scanning the world for where
Much fuss was made recently over the discovery of a painting by Artemisia Gentileschi, a near contemporary of Caravaggio’s, and the first woman to bring a successful rape charge in a Roman court. The painting of ‘Susanna and the Elders’ was found gathering dust in a storeroom at Hampton Court. Cleaned up and now glowing
The past few weeks have been spent in the enclosed rehearsal spaces of the Ambassadors Theatre in London’s West End, preparing and finally opening in Private Lives. Shut off from the world as I am, we could have become a colony of North Korea for all I know. And yet some things do penetrate –
With the boiling, broiling summer here in Provence now at an end, it’s time to start thinking about rehearsing for the tour of my one-woman show based on my new book, Behind the Shoulder Pads. The show opens in Newcastle next week. I’m looking forward to revisiting some of the places that I was evacuated
The co-host of my new podcast once threatened to sue me for libel. For my part, I did everything I could to put him on the dole. If we’d lived in Tudor times we’d probably have tried to get each other’s heads chopped off. Now Thursdays will be spent with Ed Balls, as we record
There is general excitement among the legions of fans of A Dance to the Music of Time: next week a plaque to Anthony Powell will be placed on 1 Chester Gate, the house where he started to write the many-volumed work of genius. I have a particular interest in attending, not only because Powell was
There are few better locations to resist la rentrée than the wilds of Exmoor. The late August heather and gorse. The hidden coves. The bracken and this year’s superb crop of blackberries. Then the rain. So much rain (though of course the reliably incompetent South West Water still has a hosepipe ban in place). The
Another week, another whitewash. The latest chunk of culture to be painted out of existence is ‘Fat Bottomed Girls’, Queen’s 1978 hit. Don’t misunderstand me. I’ve never liked the song. I think it’s crude, patronising and misogynistic. It was pretty dated even on the day Queen recorded it. But that’s my problem. Millions loved it.
Lee Anderson, deputy chairman of the Conservative party, popped a few monocles by saying asylum seekers reluctant to stay on a Home Office barge could ‘fuck off back to France’. Wash your very mouth out! Where did Anderson think he was performing? At the Royal Court theatre? The Guardian, which long teased Mary Whitehouse for
The temperature has hit 40°C in Crete, where I am writing this, and although there have been no fires, nothing is quite how it ought to be. I can’t work out whether this is a great opportunity to get a tan or, effectively, the end of the world. My 60-year-old taxi driver tells me that
To think I once thought cricket dull. For more than 40 days and 40 nights, I have been gripped by the Ashes. I still couldn’t tell you where short third man ends and deep backward point begins, but I have fallen in love with the rollercoaster ride that Ben Stokes and his team have taken
In this summer of sporting dramas, every patriotic sports fan likes to think he’s done his bit to help. I went up to Manchester with my brother last Thursday and in the evening we found ourselves in an Indian restaurant with the England wicket-keeper Jonny Bairstow at the next table. I feel sure it was
When someone asks ‘How are you?’ you have to assume your interlocutor is only being polite.Anyone who returns a ball-by-ball commentary about their aches and pains, work-life balance and reduced chances of summer fun thanks to the heat storm should immediately be sent to Coventry for the rest of time. That said, I am just
The Australian morning TV host called me darlin’. We’d never met, but she opened with: ‘Good to have you on, darlin’. Be with you in a moment.’ Then the picture went black. When the live show returned to my Zoom screen, I was just another viewer, watching the three hosts seated on a couch half
What a week it has been for cricket. It began with that scalding ICEC report on the ‘racist, sexist and elitist’ state of the game in England. This report was commissioned by Ian Watmore, briefly the chairman of the England and Wales Cricket Board, as a kneejerk reaction to Azeem Rafiq’s accusation of institutional racism.
I’ve spent every evening of the past week in the midsummer gloaming, making the most of the longest days of the year. London has been en fête. The National Portrait Gallery’s long-awaited reopening was occasion for an enormous party, but I found it to be a weirdly disorientating experience. As an ex-trustee, for eight years
Huge excitement last week, as archaeologists announced the discovery in Southwark of the best preserved Roman mausoleum ever found in Britain. I heard the news on the radio while driving with a friend, and both of us – living as we do south of the river – cheered. Shortly afterwards, I was invited on to
I’ll always remember where I was when my brother resigned again. I was sitting on the dock of a bay in the Adriatic, one G&T down (plus a couple of glasses of the cooling local white), halfway through the ‘signature menu’ of the Michelin-starred Alfred Keller restaurant, when that dopamine urge made me flip over
