Portrait of the Week – 6 September 2003

Mr Alastair Campbell confirmed that he was to resign as the Prime Minister’s director of com-munications and strategy. He is to be succeeded, at least in the first half of the title, by Mr David Hill, but there is to be a general musical-chairs in the department, about which Mr Peter Mandelson is said to have been consulted. The Hutton inquiry into the events surrounding the death of Dr David Kelly, the expert on Iraqi weapons, heard evidence from Mrs Janice Kelly his widow, who said, ‘He said several times over coffee, over lunch, over afternoon tea that he felt totally let down and betrayed’ – by the Ministry of Defence. His daughter, Miss Rachel Kelly, referring to a report by Mr Andrew Gilligan for which Dr Kelly was said to be the source, said, ‘He could not understand how Gilligan could make such forceful claims from the conversation they had had.’ Dr Kelly’s sister, Mrs Sarah Pape, said that he believed ‘war was not only inevitable, but it was entirely justified in the light of what the Iraqi regime could produce in the future’. The Ministry of Defence said that the five allegations made against Colonel Tim Collins by an American reservist in Iraq had been found to have no substance. A man and a woman were arrested in south Armagh by police investigating the Omagh bombing in 1998. Leonardo’s ‘Madonna with the Yarnwinder’ was stolen from Drumlanrig Castle, a seat of the Duke of Buccleuch. Patrick Procktor, the painter, died, aged 67. Peter West, the BBC sports commentator, died, aged 83. The Trades Union Congress told the government of its opposition to plans for ‘foundation’ hospitals; union leaders were invited to No. 10 Downing Street and offered a regular talking-shop arrangement. National Grid supplies failed in south London during the evening rush, stop-ping the Underground, blacking out traffic lights and streets and delaying 250,000 commuters for hours.