As political editor of the BBC I once had to appear on the Today programme just after the 7 a.m. news to discuss the passing of an MP who had tragically died experimenting with auto-eroticism. Two minutes before we went on air I was still engaged in a conference call with BBC executives anxious as
Is George Osborne too much of a toff to lead the Conservative party? On the face of it, the answer’s no, even if he does look like ‘a powdered French aristocrat’ (Charles Moore). Douglas Hurd was ruled out on the grounds that he was a titled ex-public schoolboy, but that was 22 years ago. If
For a country in which ‘gay marriage’ is supposedly still illegal it seems to be happening rather a lot. Gay weddings are already big business, and hard-pressed country house owners are desperate to host them. One grandee who has cashed in spectacularly is Earl Spencer, brother of the late Diana, Princess of Wales. Five years
Things haven’t been going particularly well for the Conservatives lately. The bounce we received in the polls from the Prime Minister’s wielding of the veto proved to be short-lived, the fault lines in the coalition are growing and Steve Hilton has left the building. The odds of us winning an outright majority at the next
The first I heard of the recent death of Norman St John Stevas was from a questioner after I had delivered a lecture on Margaret Thatcher aboard a liner off the Chilean coast. What came immediately to mind was the story of Mrs T. dispatching one of their fellow Cabinet ministers to tell Norman that
Last week, the West London Free School went out with offers to parents who’ve applied for places in September and it’s not an exaggeration to say my phone’s been ringing ever since. The first category of callers are disappointed parents who haven’t been offered places. We had nine applications for every place this year, making
To say that you live in south Northamptonshire doesn’t usually inspire much envy. Not many people dream of living between Northampton and Milton Keynes. But from where I’m sitting at my kitchen table I have a peaceful view over the wide and shallow valley of the river Tove, dominated on the horizon by the handsome
How do you stop children fighting on long car journeys? With three boys aged six and under, not to mention an eight-year-old tomboy, it’s getting to be a serious problem. Every journey seems to end in the vehicular equivalent of a cage fight, in which all four frantically try to undo their seatbelts so they
After a lifetime reporting politics, I am as well accustomed to spin as a washing machine. But a rich new example reaches me from the US. Researching her family tree, a Californian discovered that she shared a great-great-uncle, Remus Reid, with a US senator. Unfortunately, the great-great-uncle was a regularly convicted horse thief and train
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Roxy’s successor As I write this, Roxy, my children’s pet hamster, is spinning happily in her wheel, with nary a care in the world. Unfortunately, it’s not the same Roxy who went missing four weeks ago. That hamster still hasn’t materialised after I foolishly left her cage door open one night. This is Roxy Mark
I was birdwatching the other day with a jolly Methodist minister who had only ever once been to a racecourse. Knowing nothing of the sport, in the first race he had backed an outsider called something like Holy Orders, purely on the name, and collected. He put most of his winnings on The Lord in
As the co-founder of the West London Free School, I receive a lot of junk mail from ‘educationalists’ trying to sell me various bric-a-brac, most of it pretty harmless. Occasionally, though, I get something genuinely disturbing. For instance, this week a publisher tried to interest me in the novels of Charles Dickens ‘retold in a
The American poet Robert Frost wrote memorably of pausing on his pony in the snow and looking longingly into woods that were ‘lovely, dark, and deep’, regretting that he had promises to keep and ‘miles to go before I sleep/And miles to go before I sleep’. In another poem he described a woodland path as
I write this having just returned from the BBC, where I spent a hairy six-and-a-half minutes sticking up for Fred the Shred on Newsnight. Or, rather, attacking the Forfeiture Committee’s decision to strip him of his knighthood. My antagonist was Will Hutton, former editor of the Observer and currently the Principal of Hertford College, Oxford.
He didn’t quite tap the side of his nose but, looking around and dropping his voice, one of the best-connected racecourse informants I know greeted me at Cheltenham on Saturday with the news: ‘Alan King has got the sniffles in his yard.’ Striking a line through all the inmates of King’s Barbury Castle Stables on
Last Sunday, the Observer published a hostile article about the free school being set up in Wandsworth by Katharine Birbalsingh, whom it described as the ‘Tories’ favourite teacher’. As readers may recall, Katharine lost her job as deputy head of the St Michael and All Angels Academy in Camberwell after criticising Labour’s record on education
On Saturday 7 February my wife and I finally succumbed to the combined pester power of our four children and bought a hamster. They’ve been nagging us for over a year to buy them a pet and this seemed like the least hassle. We opted for a six-week-old Syrian with reddish-brown fur and white patches.
Every sport needs renewal and the most heartening thing about this jumping season is the growing prominence of a bunch of comparatively new, comparatively young trainers. A little older than some is the phenomenon John Ferguson. Moonlighting from his worldwide role as Sheikh Mohammed’s chief bloodstock adviser on the Flat, he has set up as
Since turning 48 last October I’ve begun to obsess about getting old. In 21 months I’ll be 50 and by any definition that’s middle aged. For a man, turning 50 is a bit like turning 40 for a woman. It’s an unwelcome milestone. Adjustments have to be made, humiliations prepared for. One form this obsession