In 2001, I spent part of a hard winter in a remote village near Bamiyan in the Afghan central highlands. The Taliban government had just fallen. The village was ringed with landmines. Neighbouring village had been razed to the ground by retreating militia, the roof-beams were charred, the buildings empty, and the survivors had fled
What happened on Streatham High Road last weekend was exactly what I had feared during my time as prisons minister: a recently released convict mounting a terror attack. It was the second incident of this nature in Britain in three months, but the truth is we are lucky that there have not been more like
I still live in the same house, in London, in which I lived as a baby. I walk my five-year-old son every morning to the same school, on the same route that I took 43 years ago, holding my father’s hand. We sing Gilbert and Sullivan in the same bedroom. I am whacked with a
From Rory Stewart Q. I am running for Mayor of London, and had hoped I could get people to focus on practical questions: do you feel safer than four years ago? Is your commute better? But many seem to think the role is largely ceremonial and it is not fair to blame the current mayor
My parents gave me a subscription to The Spectator in 1984, when I was 11. When I was 12, I wrote a letter to the editor, criticising the progressive views of the Bishop of Durham, and Charles Moore — who had just become the editor at the age of 27 — published it under the
What was the Cold War? For Professor John Lewis Gaddes, it was a conflict between two incompatible systems, democracy and communism, each with a different vision of liberty and human purpose. The result was a potential third world war, in which we risked being crushed by dictators or destroyed by nuclear weapons. And the US