Politics

This being the first anniversary of the terrorist attack on the Twin Towers, I feel that prudence requires anyone writing a Diary in The Spectator – which has become the principal launching-pad for Mark Steyn’s state-of-the-art verbal missiles – to use the main part of his diary to commemorate this event. So let me start uncontroversially with the statutory reminiscence about where I was when the news broke. I was lunching in my club enjoying a post-prandial digestive with Betty Boothroyd, when another member rushed in to summon us urgently to the television room upstairs. So far, so usual. But something else also sticks in my memory. Throughout the hour or so that we were all glued to the box, two elderly members, who had obviously dropped off while watching the cricket coverage before it was interrupted by the Twin Towers news, remained contentedly snoring, until eventually, when the set was turned off, one of them woke up to inquire about the score.