Lynn Barber is a former Sunday Times journalist and author of An Education and A Curious Career.
The news over Easter that Lord Adonis, the counterweight to nominative determinism, was standing as a Labour Remain MEP was greeted with a fair degree of scepticism. Many commented that it would be a novelty for him to stand for anything — in his early twenties he became an SDP councillor in Oxford, but that’s
Charlotte Bingham has had an extraordinary writing career. She wrote her first book, Coronet Among the Weeds (newly republished by Bloomsbury), when she was just 19. It was a memoir of her life as a 1950s debutante — the ‘weeds’ were the chinless wonders she met at debs’ dances — and it became an instant
Frank Field was given a standing ovation when he won The Spectator’s Parliamentarian of the Year award two weeks ago. Normally there’s polite applause, but he is the hero of the current clash between the Corbynistas and what used to be the Labour party. His local party in Birkenhead has threatened to deselect him so
This year began badly with the death of Alexander Chancellor, former editor of this magazine. He was the most fun of anyone I ever knew. Everyone at his funeral tried to describe his laugh and some even tried to imitate it, but with little success. It was as unique as the boom of the bittern.
It was a shock but not really a surprise. I came back from holiday at the beginning of August to find an item in the UK Press Gazette saying that Decca Aitkenhead had just been appointed chief interviewer at the Sunday Times, and an email from the Sunday Times magazine editor, Eleanor Mills, saying we
This year began badly with the death of Alexander Chancellor, former editor of this magazine. He was the most fun of anyone I ever knew. Everyone at his funeral tried to describe his laugh and some even tried to imitate it, but with little success. It was as unique as the boom of the bittern.
I asked a Tory friend in the country if she had any strong views about the Prime Minister that she would like me to express on her behalf. Yes, she said, her skirts are a disgrace. Why does she always have to show her knees? I relayed this to a friend in London, saying I
This time last year I was running around excitedly telling all my friends that I had an African president in the family, something none of them could boast. My younger daughter Theo is married to Sasha Scott, son of Dr Guy Scott, who was president of Zambia from October 2014 to January 2015, and the
This time last year I was running around excitedly telling all my friends that I had an African president in the family, something none of them could boast. My younger daughter Theo is married to Sasha Scott, son of Dr Guy Scott, who was president of Zambia from October 2014 to January 2015, and the
Last summer when I was staying with my friend India Knight in Cornwall she said I absolutely must join Twitter. Besides being a Sunday Times columnist, she is a Twitter queen, No. 73 in the Top Twit 100, with 57,000 followers. Better still, she has a ‘peer index rating’ — whatever that is — of