One of the joys of a recent career change is taking a slightly longer run in the mornings. I get up in the dark and hammer my way round the park with the Protforce detectives strolling behind (and breaking into a theatrical jog when I turn round). There is nothing more beautiful than watching the
When it comes to the Harry & Meghan ‘this is our truth’ Netflix documentary, the senior members of the royal family have decided to do what the Queen Mother’s friend Noël Coward always did when faced with adversity or criticism. They are simply going ‘to rise above it’. It won’t be difficult. While the Queen
Olena Zelenska, Ukraine’s First Lady, is a remarkable woman. I listened to her in a packed meeting room in Westminster as she talked of repeated rape and sexual torture. This is what ‘liberation’ means in Russian. She spelled out how Vladimir Putin is using the desecration of women on an industrial scale. Women as old
‘You’d need to live on the moon not to know about Cristiano Ronaldo’s interview with Piers Morgan,’ said England footballer Jesse Lingard. I doubt even that would provide adequate protection. I’ve never experienced such global attention for anything in my career, and it reflects Ronaldo’s status as world sport’s biggest star. In fact, given he has
You may not have had the pleasure of reading one Kurt Schlichter over the years. He’s a Trumpist blowhard columnist who writes popular dystopian novels about the looming red-blue civil war after a Democrat takeover, in a country where ‘all the sugary cereals that kids actually like’ are banned and ‘there is simply one deodorant,
Daunt Books in Marylebone was full last Tuesday evening for the launch of The Path of Peace, my book about walking from Switzerland to the North Sea, to help realise the vision of a young subaltern, Douglas Gillespie, killed in September 1915 shortly after unveiling his idea in a letter to his headmaster at Winchester
Rio de Janeiro When I first began writing about politics in 2005, my Brazilian husband, David Miranda, was not remotely interested in the subject. When politicians or journalists would visit us in Rio and invite us to dinner, he would always try to get out of it: ‘I’m not going; you’ll talk about nothing but
After the shale gas vote, I was literally sent to Coventry – to visit the UK Battery Industrialisation Centre. It is a remarkable facility that helps take batteries from development through to production. It means companies only need the hundreds of millions of pounds in investment once they have shown that their product works and
It’s been a great week for the powerful fantasies of fiction (see more below), but over the weekend no novel anywhere in the world could compete with the fantasy of British politics. Continental Europe watched spellbound as the Prime Minister and her Chancellor humiliated themselves and the standing of the UK. The reactions of the
I was interested to see that amid the Byzantine intrigues of embattled Conservative panjandrums, two Spice Girls have criticised the government. When the Spices manoeuvre politically, pundits sometimes cite my 1996 interview with the group in which they declared their Thatcherism and opposition to the single European currency. Such is their influence that it could
In Singapore last week, I was asked: do ministers just come in, reach for the dumbest available policy and go ahead without asking anyone what the consequences will be? I explained the mindset. They do not ask because they do not want to hear the reply. In their minds, they are up against old thinking
Moscow A week of somewhat mixed messages from the Kremlin. One day Vladimir Putin opened Europe’s largest Ferris wheel and presided over citywide celebrations of Moscow’s 875th anniversary, full of calm and good cheer and mentioning the war only in passing. A few days later he appeared on national TV telling the world that he
When the Queen died, I was on my way to Kyiv. My mind focused on the war in Ukraine, I found myself uncharacteristically lost for words when I was asked to comment. I took refuge in the complexities of the journey, which involved a delayed flight from Rome to Lublin, a frantic drive to Chelm
I am completely and utterly devastated by the passing of our wonderful, inspirational Queen, as I’m sure are so many in our fair isles. It is the end of the brilliant Elizabethan era. I was so proud to have been part of her last Jubilee. After being driven along the circuitous pageant route around London,
Liz Truss doesn’t waste energy on unnecessary emotion. At the announcement of her victory at the QE2 Centre, she ditched the convention of hugging your partner and shaking hands with the runner-up. Instead she grabbed her notes from her husband Hugh O’Leary and marched past Rishi Sunak without a second glance. No time for sentimentality!
You wait 11 years for a Tory leadership election and then three come along in quick succession. The first in which I had a vote was in 2005. In August of that year my candidate, David Cameron, was being told to fold his tents. The final choice was a foregone conclusion: it would be a
She’ll never do it. She’d have to be mad. Why take the risk? That’s what everyone said when I announced at the end of my BBC1 interview with Rishi Sunak that we were still hopeful that Liz Truss would also agree to a half-hour in-depth conversation in prime time. Well, guess what? She has agreed
I love Suffolk, not just for its beauty but for the stories to be found all around me. Every day I swim with my two-year-old labrador in the river Alde with views of the strange pagodas built on Orford Ness, a long strip of shingle. Amazingly, components of the nuclear bomb were tested here during
We left prepared. Bottles of water, protein snacks, phone chargers, portable Scrabble (even the teenagers can look at the internet for only so long). And we left early: our crossing was at 2 p.m., and by 9 a.m. we were already on the M25. Six-hour queues, we’d been warned. Armageddon on the M2. Somewhere around
The Season has ended and – apart from The Spectator’s summer bash of course – the two bang-up parties of July were discos in the Cotswolds. They do things differently there. At Jemima Goldsmith’s I danced so hard in high heels with a selection of her handsome young swains that I suspect the double hip
