Peter hitchens

A few years back, a hackneyed journalistic come-hither led me to a sober reckoning: would I write about someone alive today whom I especially admire? I couldn’t think of anyone I held in high esteem who wasn’t dead. Either I was surrounded by mediocrities, or I was an ungenerous, withholding jerk. I’m pleased to discover that these days I admire a host of folks who aren’t dead. Some are colleagues or acquaintances; others I’ve never met. While they don’t all embrace the same catechism, they’ve one thing in common: they depart from establishment orthodoxy on Covid-19. What they share, then, is an anti-catechism. I’ve been vocal about my dismay over

Emily Maitlis Six years ago I took my son, Milo, to Bucharest for his birthday. In the baking July sun, seeking shade, we crouched on the kerb in front of the presidential palace. And I played him the footage of the crowds on that bitter December morning of 1989 as Nicolae Ceausescu and his wife Elena emerged on to the balcony. The speech Ceausescu gave, or tried to give, on 21 December was his last. And it was extraordinary. Ceausescu used his balcony address to reassure, cajole, bribe the crowd. But it turned against him as he stood there. This footage — state TV rolling live at the time —

It’s one way to keep in touch with people. Each morning, somewhere between the first coffee of the day and the first drink, I open my computer, log on to social media and see which of my friends or colleagues is ‘trending’ today. ‘Ooh,’ I think as I see their names flash up, ‘I wonder what Julie/Charles/Allison/James/Rod (usually Rod) has done now’. Then I click and read all about their crimes, usually through a filter of people labouring under the impression that a writer’s job is to say what everyone else has already agreed on. The howls, incidentally, mostly emanating from people who in no sense subscribe to the organ

Although Russell Brand has stopped producing his YouTube series The Trews after tiring of being in the spotlight, fans of the comedian-turned-revolutionary can now get their fill in the new documentary Brand: A Second Coming. While the film, which is directed by Ondi Timoner, was originally supported by Brand, he later got cold feet on viewing a first cut. After asking for changes — and saying that he would try and prevent the film’s release — he went on to distance himself from the project by boycotting the film’s premiere. So what was it in the film that caused Brand to perform a U-turn? Well aside from disclosures about his colourful love life, it appears to be none

While Mr S is used to reporting from the sideline on Twitter wars, he tends to refrain from taking part in them. So Steerpike was amused to find himself in Louise Mensch’s firing line this morning. His sin? Being Peter Hitchens, apparently. Mensch accused the Mail on Sunday columnist of being the author of this very column. She said that unlike Hitchens, she didn’t write stories about him. When Hitchens pointed out that he hadn’t written about Mensch for seven years, the former Tory MP suggested that he was in fact… Mr Steerpike: While Mr S is sorry to break the news that he is not, in fact, Hitchens, happily, this

Today’s front pages have received criticism across the board for being too party political with the election only a day away. Now questions are also being asked as to why Peter Hitchens’ weekly column was missing from the Mail on Sunday at the weekend. Instead, the columnist, who has been vocal about his disdain for David Cameron, tweeted his pre-election column from five years ago on Monday. The article asks readers ‘not to fall for the shimmering, greasy, cynical fraud which is the Cameron project’: So far no explanation has been offered and Hitchens has said that he is unable to comment on why his column was missing from the paper: However, the writer is

Cocaine addiction is a dreadful thing. I’ve seen it so many times: bright, once-pretty people with washed-out grey faces who can’t think about anything else. Children, partners, careers – they can all go hang so long as the restaurant has a loo where you can do a quick line between courses, or you can nip outside to suck on a crack pipe. This how frantic it can get: If anyone has stopped to watch me go to the cash machine and withdraw stacks of bills, several times because of the $200 transaction limit, then head out to an idling van with tinted windows, and return minutes later with bulging pockets, it wouldn’t take much

The Goldsmith effect Sir: Much as I admire filial loyalty, I cannot allow Zac Goldsmith’s article about his father to go uncorrected (‘My dad saved the pound’, 28 February). Sir James Goldsmith was a formidable campaigner against the European Union and the euro currency, but at no point did he alter government policy. Zac Goldsmith suggests that I did not offer a referendum on membership of the euro currency out of conviction. This is wrong. I believed that any decision to abandon sterling — which I myself did not favour — was so fundamental that it would need national endorsement. On constitutional grounds some Cabinet members dissented, but many will

When David Cameron announced ‘state multiculturalism has failed’, the chattering classes gasped in disbelief. Here was a Prime Minister, bull dozing his way into  the tricky area of immigration — one his predecessors had shied away from. The speech was praised by the right, and lambasted by those on the left — including his coalition partners. David Goodhart received a similar reaction with the publication of his book  The British Dream. In it, he examines the success and failures of post-war immigration in Britain. On the right, the book was welcomed as a thorough examination into multiculturalism. When the former Tory leader Michael Howard reviewed Goodhart’s book in the Spectator, he explained why he backs