New York It’s as easy as pie to get through Checkpoint Charlie. The very agreeable Hispanic immigration officer at Kennedy asked me to place my index fingers, one at a time, on a scanning machine. My prints were instantly checked against the dabs of (I suppose) suicide bombers, anarchists, white slavers, drugs barons, porn kings,
Hurrah! At last we get the MP3 player we bought our son for Christmas to work. Four adults, working in shifts, couldn’t get it to work on Christmas Day. The same four adults, still working in shifts — very ill-tempered shifts — couldn’t get it to work on Boxing Day. The instructions, provided by Hyun
Six months can be an awfully long time in politics. When I wrote here only last July that the Tories knew in their hearts they could never win an election under Iain Duncan Smith, few of them cared to admit that publicly. Even now, when the Tory coup has an eerie inevitability about it with
The recent story in the Sunday Times about the hundreds of people who have declined honours in the past 50 or 60 years was fascinating. Contrary to the usual interpretation, it showed that the system is actually fairer than I thought. The list was dominated by people of immense worth whose apparent neglect by the
Last Wednesday I went straight from Prime Minister’s Questions to RAF Brize Norton to catch a VC10 to Iraq. I wanted to thank some of the British troops facing Christmas far from home and also meet as many people as I could in Baghdad to gain a better understanding of the challenges facing the Coalition
I’m not sure about this old ship business,’ said Marina. ‘Where’s the love-interest? Why can’t we go and see the Hugh Grant thing?’ ‘No no,’ I said, ‘I know it’s all about ships, but it’s gonna be great. Trust me.’ And I was right. They must be wizards, the people who filmed that Master and
Addis Ababa The last time I was here was to cover the story of the mid-Eighties famine for the Mirror. The story was complicated by the fact that we had Robert ‘Mercy Mission’ Maxwell for company. I was summoned to the presence for a briefing by Captain Bob. ‘First, we are going to save the
I keep forgetting where I am. A different American city every week makes it hard to remember where the light switch is on the bedside table. Is it up or down, do you push it or twiddle it or is it connected to a more complicated system that you have to get out of bed
Miranda Sawyer’s Channel 4 programme pleading for the abolition of the age of consent, Sex Before 16: Why the Law is Failing, featured the following adults: the editor of a sexually frank magazine for young girls, Bliss; a QC as a legal expert; a child protection expert; an MP; three experts in ‘teenage sexuality’; a
In all the endless talk about school examinations I have never heard this important point made. It is that ever improving school exam results are the nearest thing yet to a panacea for universal happiness. Just notice how many people they please. Pupils, or students as everyone calls them these days, like getting A grades
This is the best time of the year to be in northern China. The monsoon is over and the summer temperatures are cooling down in Beijing and Shanghai. It’s the best time for food, too. ‘The peaches are in season in Beijing now,’ is the very first thing Fumei says as she greets us. ‘And
I was as excited as a kid going to Disneyland to be invited on Concorde’s last flight from New York to London. I’ve always regarded it as one of Britain’s greatest ambassadors, and we considered that being a part of its final journey was too important a historic event to miss. Percy and I thus
An evening of virulent anti-American propaganda at Covent Garden, or rather a terrific Madame Butterfly, brilliantly lit as well as sung. The evening was marred only by the distraction of a madwoman waving her arms at the edge of the stage. This was bootlicking by the Opera House to the Department for Culture. In order
The Man Booker Prize dinner was held on Tuesday in the Egyptian room of the British Museum. It’s something of an ordeal for the six on the shortlist who have to wait until the pudding to hear who’s won. I’d only read one of the books, but they send you a disc of readings from
Blackpool People sometimes compare the Daily Telegraph and the Conservative party. Watching the heaving sea from the Imperial Hotel in my last week as editor of the above, I do the same. In 1993, two years before I took the job, Rupert Murdoch began a price war. He cut the price of the Times from
Did you have a nice holiday? I know I did. Did you find yourself in a hotel bedroom in Naples looking after four children between the ages of two and six? Two girls and two boys, while everyone else went sightseeing. (‘Look! There’s a boy stealing that lady’s Prada handbag!’) The two girls have me
I recently passed into a new decade. With this passing has come some rather surprising advantages, most of which are of a financial nature. My Senior Railcard, which costs £18 a year and gives me a discount on all trains, has already paid for itself handsomely. I would not have done anything about getting one
Last week The Spectator interviewed Silvio Berlusconi, and there followed a political furore that dominated the Italian news for – well, at least a couple of days. The cause of the crisis was the opinion of Italy’s 57th Italian post-war prime minister on the subject of judges. This is a field in which he is
You will expect me to bore you about my holiday in France, where, like Joan Collins, we found things hideously expensive compared with a year ago. When the credit-card bill arrives, I shall console myself that the euro is now heading south, and that when we return next year everything will be 10 per cent
San Andreas Bay Back from a flying visit to friendly, overheated Britain, we begin the annual migration north. Like thousands of other Texans, we are escaping our terrible weather. Some of us go to Maine, others to Oregon. My wife, Linda, and I go to northern California. It’s a radical change of political climate, too,