Hearing about the tsunami on Boxing Day, I remembered Keith and Nicki. Keith Lake used to be my driver when I was editor of the Daily Telegraph and remains a great friend. He and his wife Nicki were on holiday in the Maldives. I felt certain, knowing Keith, that a) he would have got into
People won’t put it in Books of the Year, but there is no more entertaining Christmas present than The Lord Chamberlain Regrets by Dominic Shellard and Steve Nicholson (British Library). It is a history of British theatre censorship, and describes the strange system by which, until 1968, the chief courtier, the Lord Chamberlain, pre-censored all
Muriel Cullen, who died last week, aged 83, was the elder and only sister of Margaret Thatcher. Living happily with her husband on his well-run farm in Essex, she showed not the slightest desire to be famous. I found her fascinating, though. In the course of my work on the life of Lady Thatcher, I
On the whole, one sympathises with those sections of the media that do not rush to reveal the sex lives of public figures, rather than the tabloids which bellow about the public’s ‘right to know’. But there does come a point when those of us who say things like, ‘A politician’s private life is just
There is no shortage of people who say that they are willing to break the hunting ban. Particularly the young, who have no responsibilities, and the old, who feel they have nothing to lose, declare themselves ready for prison, even for suicide. But supporters of rural liberty should beware of the great curse of English
Although hunt supporters are right to point out that people of all classes hunt, Labour MPs are equally right to see their ban on hunting, now at last being enacted, as a great blow against the upper classes. Very occasionally, you meet an upper-class person who is against hunting, but this is usually because of
The Prince of Wales will be 56 on Sunday. So will Paul Dacre, editor of the Daily Mail. It is interesting that these two men were born on the same day, since observing their parallel careers tells you quite a lot about modern Britain. There are superficial similarities between them. Both men are very rich
‘It’s that Florida 2000 feeling all over again’, said the BBC anchorman at breakfast on Wednesday. It wasn’t. George Bush was well ahead in the popular vote nationally and seemed set to win even without Ohio. The only similarity with Florida 2000 was the Democrats’ (and therefore the television’s) desire to take away the legitimacy
There isn’t enough dialogue between Islam and other faiths, so when invited to address the admirable Three Faiths Forum, chaired by Sir Sigmund Sternberg, I happily agreed, and went to the mosque in the Whitechapel Road last week. I had been asked to raise worries I had expressed in an article about some aspects of