Charles Moore is a former editor of The Spectator and the Daily Telegraph. He became a non-affiliated peer in July 2020.
When Prime Minister, Mrs Thatcher did not have a great deal to do with The Spectator. She was not hostile, but slightly suspicious and perplexed. ‘This is Charles Moore,’ I remember her saying edgily as she introduced me to the Turkish prime minister at a reception. ‘He supports us some of the time.’ After the sinking of theBelgrano in
It is worth pointing out yet again that Mrs Thatcher really was very brave last Friday. It would have been no disgrace to her if, once she had realised how narrow had been her escape, she had felt weak and — as did a few of the Tory wives in the Grand Hotel — had
‘Délégation Royaume Uni. Salle 4’ announces a scruffy piece of paper projected onto the black and white television screens of the Centre Charlemagne. The journalists hurry upstairs for the latest from Mr Bernard Ingham, Mrs Thatcher’s press secretary. Mr Ingham is not conspicuously communautaire. He tells us who spoke in the session — Mr Lubbers,
Margaret Thatcher was always the candidate from the outside, both because of her background and because of her sex, and so it was an extraordinary event in the middle of the 1970s that what was considered the stuffiest of the political parties chose her and once that had happened, of course it was transformative. It
The press is now to be regulated under the supervision of a body created by Royal Charter. On the website of the Privy Council Office, it explains that a Royal Charter is ‘a way of incorporating a body … turning it from a collection of individuals into a single legal entity’. New grants of charters
The strange story that jockeys have been asked to ride more slowly in the Grand National on Saturday has not been explained. The demand to make the fences safer has made them more dangerous. If fences are lower, horses can run at them faster. Since their riders want to win, they will urge their horses
‘And just to round off the week,’ said the chirpy Radio 3 announcer, ‘the St Mark Passion on Friday.’ Just to round off the week, eh? Did Jesus say, ‘It is finished’, just to round off the week? His death, alone, did not round off anything. Wait till Sunday to find out why! With Eddie
Last week, Alex Salmond announced the date for the referendum in Scotland, 18 September 2014. The question is phrased to his advantage. ‘Should Scotland become an independent country?’ it asks. This invites a romantic Yes. In sober, practical terms, the question really is ‘Should Scotland leave the United Kingdom?’ But perhaps we should welcome the
There is supposed to be a Leveson Part II, although everyone has forgotten about it. As well as telling him to look into everything bad about newspapers (‘Please could you clean the Augean stables by Friday, Hercules’), David Cameron also asked Lord Justice Leveson to investigate who did what when over phone-hacking. This was postponed
In Washington last week, I encountered amazement that the Bank of England is about to be run by a foreigner. This was not because of any contempt for Mark Carney, the Governor of the Bank of Canada, who will soon succeed Sir Mervyn King, but because Americans could not imagine how a job so pivotal
In Washington last week, I encountered amazement that the Bank of England is about to be run by a foreigner. This was not because of any contempt for Mark Carney, the Governor of the Bank of Canada, who will soon succeed Sir Mervyn King, but because Americans could not imagine how a job so pivotal
On the BBC television news on Monday night, the first three items concerned alleged misbehaviour by the famous — Cardinal Keith O’Brien, Lord Rennard and Vicky Pryce, the ex-wife of the ex-Cabinet minister, Chris Huhne. I begin to wonder if an accidental revolution is in progress. There is no revolutionary political doctrine, just a wish
People are quite often pilloried for saying the opposite of what they actually said. I have read Hilary Mantel’s London Review of Books lecture, and she is quite clearly not attacking the Duchess of Cambridge, but criticising what it is that people try to turn royal women into. When she speaks of the Duchess as
People are quite often pilloried for saying the opposite of what they actually said. I have read Hilary Mantel’s London Review of Books lecture, and she is quite clearly not attacking the Duchess of Cambridge, but criticising what it is that people try to turn royal women into. When she speaks of the Duchess as ‘a jointed
Can anyone think of a bigger scandal in any British public service than that revealed at Stafford Hospital? It is worse than Aberfan, or Bloody Sunday, or the King’s Cross fire, or Jimmy Savile, or even the abolition of grammar schools. Up to 1,200 people died unnecessarily, not because of one error, or a particular
Pope Benedict is stepping down for conscientious reasons about which he will have thought deeply. But I still fear that his decision is a mistake. First, its manner was unfortunate. An institution like the Catholic Church should avoid unnecessary shocks. It seems that the main people involved were told only on Sunday, and presented with
It was rude and impolitic of David Cameron not to sit in on the parliamentary debate on the Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Bill. The whole thing was his idea and would not have come to Parliament without his insistence. Of all his measures so far, it is the one that has caused greatest grief to
Before Gerald Scarfe caused outrage in the last Sunday Times with a cartoon so tasteless (and, critics said, anti-Semitic) that Rupert Murdoch issued a personal apology, our columnist Charles Moore pointed out a trend: Idly flicking through the latest Sunday Times, I notice the cartoon by Gerald Scarfe. It shows President Assad of Syria, covered with blood,
In which forthcoming by-election does one candidate’s election address boast that he was the ‘last Captain of Boats [at Eton] to win the Ladies Plate at Henley in 1960’, while one of his rivals says that, at Harrow, ‘unfortunately I did not cover myself with academic glory’? The answer is a by-election among the Conservative
David Cameron’s long-awaited speech on Europe this week falls 50 years to the day after the death of Hugh Gaitskell. Gaitskell, who died in harness, was the last leader of either main party to oppose entry to what people then called the Common Market. In his last party conference speech as Labour leader, in October