Saira Khan recalls the moment she met relatives in the hijab for the first time and one of them told her: ‘We are not British, we are Muslim In July 1989 I had an experience that scared and alienated me, but also made me realise who I was and, more importantly, who I was not
Rod Liddle says that the car-bomb plot was the predictable consequence of multiculturalism, lax immigration, mad human rights laws and neocon aggression. Shame the government can’t see this ‘Al-Qa’eda brain surgeons fail to blow up large car full of petrol’ has an agreeable ring to it, as a sort of taunt at our enemies and
It must be odd being God these days. Revealed religion generally — and the Christian God in particular — are often in the dock, screamed at by literary types with a name to make or a reputation to uphold. Christopher Hitchens, in the latest of a series of pamphlets presented in book form, thunders in
In 1986 a BBC producer approached Mohamed Al Fayed and asked him to contribute to a programme called The Uncrowned Jewels. Mr Al Fayed had recently acquired Harrods as well as a dilapidated villa in Paris that had belonged to the Duke and Duchess of Windsor. After a few discussions, it was decided that Martyn
Chinua Achebe is chuckling as he attempts to describe how much it means to him to have won the Man Booker International Prize. ‘How do I answer that?’ he wonders, in his soft, sing-song voice. ‘It means I am appreciated in certain quarters, that my work means something to people. When I started writing all
Fraser Nelson says that the new Prime Minister has positioned himself in territory that the Tories have left vacant, and is ready to fight a cultural battle to defend the ‘British way of life’ and win over the C1 voters who decide elections It was a phrase that David Cameron would never dare to utter.
It’s not enough, if you wanted a rare interview with Lady T, just to cosy up to her. This would only, in the parlance of formal logic, be a necessary but not sufficient condition. So first I took her out to lunch — at Scott’s. As we entered the restaurant, I observed to Lady T:
British politics used to be dominated by the country’s relentless economic decline. Long before James Carville’s mantra for Bill Clinton’s 1992 presidential election bid — ‘It’s the economy, stupid’ — it was the economy which determined British general elections and alternative economic policies which most divided the parties. I spent most of my early career
A Job Centre machine had been installed right outside James Purnell’s office. It’s one of the Department of Work and Pensions’s new toys, matching up some of Britain’s 1.6 million unemployed with its 638,000 vacancies. But why this device should be outside the desk of the Minister for Pensions is unclear. ‘It is rather ominous,’
‘Bastard’! hissed Mohamed Fayed when he saw me in the Royal Courts of Justice during the pre-hearings for the inquests into Princess Diana and Dodi Fayed’s deaths. This was my welcome to Planet Fayed — the parallel universe currently dominating the inquest pre-hearings. I had never seen my quest for evidence into how Diana died
To download a podcast about Tessa Mayes’s experiences with the celebrity Scientologists, click here. ‘A culture is only as great as its dreams and its dreams are dreamed by artists,’ wrote L. Ron Hubbard, who founded the Church of Scientology Celebrity Centre in 1969, 15 years after he formed the church itself. So, in a
Richard Sanders recalls the exploits of Bartholomew Roberts, a swashbuckling 18th-century buccaneer to match Johnny Depp — except that he drank tea, and was probably gay The Pirates of the Caribbean films, the third of which has just been released, have revived the age-old interest in all things piratical. But the average Victorian schoolboy would
At last an issue to unite all of us — right, left, Muslim, Christian and Hindu, liberal and conservative. The decision to knight the author Salman Rushdie has brought together, in angry concordat, almost the entire world. There are those who, even now, may be strapping on the semtex to deliver to Rushdie the righteous
Fraser Nelson says that Tony Blair’s swansong summit next week is fraught with danger for Gordon Brown. The last thing the next Prime Minister wants in his in-tray is a new EU constitution that he has to sell to the British public For what must surely be the last time, war has broken out between
At last: an admission from a senior member of the government that it lied through its teeth and misled the public in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq, back in the early spring of 2003. Or at least that’s how I read Gordon Brown’s comments about the way in which New Labour used intelligence
The Blair-Bush partnership, so awkward for the Labour party, has come to an end and everyone is speculating about how Gordon Brown will recalibrate the Special Relationship. But what about the Tories? Marginalised for years by Tony Blair’s diagonal alliance with the Republican President, they have struggled to know who their real friends are in
Ross Clark says that the anti-globalisation rioters protesting at the G8 summit in Germany and Labour’s deputy leadership contenders are part of a new and dangerous trend towards wealth-bashing One of the little-remarked side effects of 9/11 was the eclipse of the anti-globalisation movement. It is not easy to remember that in the summer of
Bring back Sven!
The balance between style and substance varies sharply with each Prime Minister. In a few weeks, we will see yet another swing of the pendulum. But never has the contrast been greater than in Queen Victoria’s reign. Disraeli was the man for style — an exception rather than a model, for his combination of gifts
‘Go West, young man, go West,’ newspaper editor Horace Greeley advised ambitious 19th-century Americans as the nation pursued its Manifest Destiny. Well, it might have been Greeley, or perhaps John Babson Lane Soule, editor of the Terre Haute (Indiana) Daily Express. No matter the author: the advice is as applicable today as it was 150