Why did Alastair attack me so ferociously? And why doesn’t the BBC employ him as an interviewer?

Threatening letters on 10 Downing Street-headed notepaper are scary and I admit taking fright. My autobiography, Chance Witness, was on the verge of publication, and I was heading for the Grapes in Narrow Street for lunch with a Foreign Office friend when my mobile phone rang. Would I call my editor’s office urgently? I did. They read me a letter from the Prime Minister’s press office, signed by a member of staff there in the name of Alastair Campbell, and faxed through to the Times for publication. As I listened to the letter my blood ran cold.

Its more gratuitously abusive remarks did not survive the negotiation which sometimes occurs in these cases, so I will not quote all of what, on 26 September, the Prime Minister’s director of communications and strategy intended for publication. What did finally appear concerned an excerpt from my book which had just appeared in the Times.