Manton has a magic. The majestic beauty of the famous training centre on the Wiltshire Downs has to be seen to be believed, especially at daffodil time. There are gallops in every direction — the Barton Gallop, the Clatford Gallop, the Valley Gallop, the stiff Derby Gallop used traditionally 20 and 10 days before the
In hindsight, it probably wasn’t very wise to invite a German girl to come on holiday with me during the World Cup. This was in 1990 and I was staying at my parents’ house in the South of France. Rather shamefully, I cannot now remember her name. She was tall and blonde and writing a
It’s fairly safe to say that when the experimental Lohner-Porsche became the world’s first four-wheel-drive car in 1899 its designers did not anticipate that exactly a century later another prestigious German manufacturer would launch a rather more successful 4WD that was — in one respect — technologically less advanced. That earlier car was powered by
I’m writing this from the Hay Festival which seems to be populated by an unusually large number of government ministers. I spotted Michael Gove wandering along Newport Street eating an ice cream on Sunday afternoon and later this week I’m hoping to catch Nick Clegg being interviewed by Philippe Sands. If this annual gathering of
The best racing yards combine experience and tradition with youthful energy. Walk into Park House Stables, Kingsclere with the blackbirds swooping about their brood-raising business and you feel the vibes immediately. There is grandeur and solidity about the red-brick Victorian yards built by the great John Porter, trainer of 23 Classic winners, with their turrets
This promised to be an awkward encounter. I was invited on to Newsnight on Tuesday to discuss the education bill in the Queen’s Speech and my opponent was to be Ed Balls. For me, this was a bit like an Albanian dissident being asked to participate in a studio discussion with Enver Hoxa. During the
To the untrained eye, the social gulf that separates David Cameron and Nick Clegg is hard to spot. They are both sons of financiers, both ex-public schoolboys, both the products of elite English universities and both in their early forties. Indeed, when they gave their joint press conference in the Rose Garden last week it
Over the past five weeks I have often found myself cursing the British public. I cursed them when Labour’s support started climbing in the opinion polls, grumbling about how some people didn’t deserve to vote. I cursed them when they flocked to the Lib Dem banner following Nick Clegg’s performance in the first debate, complaining
It was to have been Ascot on Saturday. But alternative political duties for CNN intervened. ‘OK,’ said the little green man descending from his flying saucer in Parliament Square, ‘I appreciate that “Take me to your Leader” won’t do right now. But when can you take me to your Leader?’ I had been musing at
One of the perks of this job is the loan cars. Manufacturers keep press fleets of current models for launches and for loans to motoring writers to try out and write about. When the cars leave the fleet, they are usually sold into the dealer network, from where they are sold to you, as demonstrators.
Four weeks ago, I made one of the toughest decisions of my life. Ever since I was a child I’ve known I was different but I’ve done my best to conceal that fact. For most of my adult life I’ve pretended to be ‘normal’ and my late mother, God bless her, went to her grave
During elections, said H.L. Mencken, all the parties rush around the country insisting that the others are unfit to govern — and in the end they are all proved right. I don’t bet on politics because as a part-time political commentator I don’t want to be accused of letting wagers colour my judgment, but I
As the leader of a group of parents trying to set up Britain’s first free school, I’ve been spending the past week or so frantically mugging up on the Liberal Democrats’ education policy. In the event of a hung parliament, would the Lib Dems support the Conservatives’ educational reforms? On the face of it, the
It is now generally accepted that David Cameron made a colossal blunder in agreeing to the televised debates. Had last Thursday’s debate not taken place, the Conservatives would still have a comfortable lead over the other two main parties, on track for a small overall majority. Yet among the commentariat — even those in the
Just how much appetite is there for David Cameron’s Big Society? Not much, according to the chattering classes. One of the more bizarre sights on the day the Conservatives’ launched their manifesto was watching the liberal left poo-poo the notion that ordinary people could be ‘prised away from the telly’. Jackie Ashley in the Guardian,
Biblical scholars say that five is the number of grace, three the number of perfection. ‘Fifteen, therefore, relates to acts wrought by divine grace.’ I don’t know if Tony McCoy was saying his prayers as his mount Don’t Push It cleared the last and headed round The Elbow for the Grand National finishing line but,
Espying Katie Walsh at Newbury with a ride for Nicky Henderson, I couldn’t help recalling one bookie’s reaction to the finish of the gruelling four-mile National Hunt Chase for amateurs at this year’s Cheltenham when she and Nina Carberry finished first and second, both earning bans for overuse of the ‘persuader’. ‘Birds first and second,’
When you’ve got as many young children as I have, the prospect of going on holiday anywhere isn’t very appealing. It’s not being somewhere else that’s the problem, though there’s a risk that their sleep patterns will be disrupted. Rather, it’s getting to wherever it is you’re going. How do you keep four children under
Just as a stopped clock is right twice a day, Gordon Brown’s government has finally done something worth celebrating. Britain is launching an executive space agency that will take control of the money spent on space by the different government departments and science funding bodies. It is a belated response to the surprising success of
I was slightly sceptical of Team Cameron’s decision to unveil their ‘secret weapon’ last Sunday — namely, Dave’s wife Samantha. Not that she isn’t luminously beautiful. And her ability to juggle motherhood with a high-flying career will undoubtedly appeal to many professional women. Rather, it’s her social provenance that concerned me. Wouldn’t her transparently upper-class