Nearly five years ago, a friend in the diplomatic service was hovering outside the permanent under-secretary’s room in the Foreign Office. Through the open door, he overheard the senior official telling ‘Jock’ not to worry, the FO would be sending a ‘big hitter’ as ambassador to Kabul. They would make sure that the surge of
It is, as David Cameron says, a time to pause, listen and reflect: reflect that for every granny starving and dehydrating on an NHS ward there is quite possibly a patient in a private hospital being pulled screaming into a cold shower. If it wasn’t already obvious that private provision is no panacea for public
The EU’s president and foreign minister are both duds. Eurosceptics should rejoice What puzzles me is that my Eurosceptic friends are not dancing in the streets outside the Brussels Berlaymont. Those of us who still think that, for all its undoubted irritations, the European Union is fundamentally a good thing have been weeping into our
Our womenfolk are taking to the streets again in an attempt to convince us that they should be allowed to be called sluts without men thinking they might be ‘sluts’. Our womenfolk are taking to the streets again in an attempt to convince us that they should be allowed to be called sluts without men
Al-Qa’eda has begun to harness the Arab revolts Since the movement was launched by the self-immolation of a Tunisian street vendor, I have been a sceptic about this Arab Spring and its promise of delivering economic prosperity for all. When it comes to democratic institutions and the rule of law, the Middle East has been
Does it matter who actually wrote a novel – or a political speech? What’s the most distinguished ghost-written book? John F. Kennedy, while still a postgraduate student, put his name to a book that went on to win the Pulitzer. Decades after his assassination it emerged that it was substantially ghosted. Should not the keepers
No one will be amazed that George Orwell disliked Roman Catholicism; it is odd, though, that he seemed unable to leave the subject alone. Even his left-wing cronies found this obsession tedious. The Marxist journalist Jon Kimche, who shared a flat with him in the mid-1930s, complained that his conversation amounted to little more than
