Jonathan Aitken

Diary – 1 May 2004

Tony Blair may be shaky at home but Stateside he is second only to Churchill

issue 01 May 2004

Washington

Not since Randolph Churchill’s The Fight for the Tory Leadership has any book of political reportage caused as much of a stir on either side of the Atlantic as Bob Woodward’s latest bestseller Plan of Attack. In the last few days I have listened to detailed dissections of the gospel according to Woodward. I have discussed his book in the West Wing of the White House, at student seminars at Georgetown University, during dinner with my fellow columnists of the American Spectator and at the hospitable home of its editor-in-chief, Bob Tyrrell. I even had a conversation about Woodward in a place where his fierce anti-war opponents would no doubt like to see President George W. Bush — a high-security Texas prison.

Political discussion was not, though, the point of the prison visit. On Easter Sunday, my wife Elizabeth and I accompanied my biographical subject, Charles Colson, to the death row of a women’s jail.

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