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The sun was rising over the River Severn as I crossed the bridge from Wales into England. I was driving home to a party for my 60th birthday. I had not slept the night before. I had been at the bedside of my father as he lay dying. Death finally came, as so often, in the darkest … Read more
The late afternoon sun still had enough warmth to make sitting in my garden a delight. The blackbirds were competing with the robins and a woodpecker was drilling out the occasional rhythmic drum roll — the perfect contrast to the lament of a dove somewhere in the distance. The hoverflies had made a welcome early … Read more
We are all preparing for CV-Day in our own ways. That’s the day when the virus reaches its peak and the phoney war is over. The last real phoney war began when we declared war on Germany and it ended when the Germans invaded France and the Low Countries in 1940. It took another five … Read more
Britain is borrowing again. Big time. Remember the old joke about the American general giving evidence to a congressional committee about spending on armaments? ‘You spend a million here… a million there… pretty soon you’re talking real money.’ It was funny then because a million really was a lot of money (I said it was … Read more
A cabinet minister was interviewed on Today this week. Big deal. Isn’t that what the programme has been doing for about 60 years? Indeed it is — but not for the past three months. There’s been a government boycott of serious programmes and Boris Johnson has not appeared on Today since the election. He’s ordered … Read more
There’s not a journalist in the land who hasn’t, at some time or another, asked this question: ‘Can I quote you on that?’ It invariably comes during a conversation with someone important who has said something pretty shocking. I had just such a conversation last week. It was with a senior, well-respected figure in the … Read more
The question is as old as time itself: ‘Has the world gone mad?’ You hear it every other day. The world’s gone mad, some say, when the police investigate someone for doubting whether a man can become a woman. Or vice versa. Others say it’s because we take Twitter seriously. Or because we invite an … Read more
THE MOUNTBATTENS: THEIR LIVES AND LOVES by Andrew Lownie (Blink £20, 400pp) THE MOUNTBATTENS: THEIR LIVES AND LOVES by Andrew Lownie (Blink £20, 400pp) Everyone of a certain age remembers where they were, 40 years ago, when they heard the news that Lord Mountbatten had been assassinated by an IRA bomb. In this impressively well-researched … Read more