Just a year ago on this page I was writing about Pope Benedict XVI’s elder brother Georg and how, while ostensibly discreet and loyal to his celebrated sibling, he contrived at the same time to make him look too old and bumbling for the leadership of the Roman Catholic Church. In a book, My Brother,
‘What are you writing?’ I asked my nine-year-old daughter as she sat at the kitchen table doing her homework. ‘A recount,’ she said. ‘What’s a recount?’ She looked at me with utter disdain. ‘Duh! A recount.’ I calmly explained that you could recount an event in a piece of writing, but that didn’t make what
It is usually a mistake to return to places one has known as a child. I have only once been back to the large, white-stuccoed, early-Victorian manor house in Hertfordshire where I was born and brought up, and it was a dispiriting experience. Although the house was near to the town of Ware, less than
The first time I met the jockey Andrew Thornton, at a hotel dinner, he had a pair of ladies tights sticking out of his pocket. No, he hadn’t just been interrupted in an amorous encounter in the car park. Nor does he have an eyebrow-raising secret taste in underwear. The tights were part of the
Just before Vicky Pryce was sentenced on Monday, her QC made a plea for clemency on the grounds that the case had already ‘undermined her professional position considerably’. In other words, she’d been punished enough and to send her to prison would be excessive. But had the judge felt sympathy for Pryce on account of
If you have nothing to do, are suffering from stress, and wish to be rendered comatose, I recommend that you get interested in the efforts being made by Edinburgh Zoo to mate its two giant pandas. The zoo has thoughtfully installed video cameras in the pandas’ enclosure so that we can constantly watch them online
I feel a twinge of pity for Prince Alwaleed bin Talal — and it’s not often you can say that about a billionaire Saudi businessman. According to Forbes, he’s worth $20 billion, making him the 26th richest man in the world. But is he? The prince has disputed this estimate of his net worth, claiming
Eight years ago I was in Rome for The Spectator to write a piece about the election of a new pope after the death of John-Paul II. Within two days, and after only four ballots, some wispy white smoke emerged from the little chimney on the roof of the Sistine chapel. The College of Cardinals
Racing for me is all about hope, although the Irish training wizard Mick O’Toole did once declare, ‘Racing is a game of make-believe. If people didn’t have horses they thought were better than they really were, National Hunt racing would collapse.’ Two weeks ago, on a snowy morning in Stow-on-the-Wold, I was trying to keep
Not a day passes in which I don’t regret firing Irena. She was my ‘daily’ from 1991 to 2004. I don’t think I could have asked for anyone better qualified. Until she came to work for me she had been a professor of geology at a Russian university, but she lost her job when the
I am pleased to report that my eight ducks have survived the great chill, when their pond was frozen over; for during all that time no fox ever ventured across the ice to kill them. And now that the ice has melted they are looking much more frolicsome and less forlorn. But strange things have
I can’t quite believe the number of professional historians who have denounced Michael Gove’s new history curriculum. Richard Evans, for instance, the Regius Professor of Modern History at Cambridge. Scarcely a day passes without him launching an attack on the Education Secretary. He has denounced the new curriculum as ‘a mindless regression to the patriotic
One ‘bridge too far’ should have been enough, but it looks to me as if Michael Gove has already embarked on a second one with his new plan to tackle obesity in schools. Despite having been forced to drop his cherished proposal for an ‘English baccalaureate’, the Education Secretary is reported to be preparing to
In his days as Foreign Secretary Robin Cook once told me that every politician should have a spell as a racing tipster to teach him humility — he tried it for the Glasgow Herald. I am not sure it worked the full miracle in his case, but racing is a true leveller with triumph and
One of the downsides of getting older is witnessing your friends and acquaintances being honoured in various ways. I don’t just mean knighthoods and peerages, I also mind the little things — an entry in Who’s Who, for instance, or an honorary degree from a red-brick university. It’s reached such a point that I daresay
This is a big week for gays on both sides of the Atlantic. By the time you read this, the House of Commons will have voted to permit gay marriage, despite an angry revolt by a large number of Tory MPs; and in Texas the Boy Scouts of America may also have voted (less certainly)
One of my reasons for coming to Kenya was to visit Tango Maus, the farm of Spectator ‘Wild life’ columnist Aidan Hartley. I’ve read so much about this mystical place —the skirmishes with the local elephant population, the troublesome livestock, the Gunga Din-like farm manager — that I was dying to see it. And having
I went to a funeral last Saturday, a depressingly frequent occurrence at my age. But it was an exceptional funeral, not only because of its gloriously peaceful rural setting amid the still snow-flecked hills of north-west Hampshire, or because of the beauty of the service that took place in the tiny village of Tangley’s charming
I don’t just love jumping horses — I love the folk who train them and ride them and those who watch them doing it, too. Open the sports pages on Sunday or Monday and what do you get in the acres of newsprint devoted to football? A scowling Sir Alex Ferguson ranting that Manchester United
Before setting off for Kenya, where I’m spending six weeks helping The Spectator’s ‘Wild life’ columnist, Aidan Hartley, set up a school, I worried about the safety of my family. Would I be exposing my wife and four children to danger? I’d heard a lot of horror stories about violent crimes committed against the white