Diary
Diary
When I finally head back to church this weekend, after a year of Covid-avoidance, it is going to feel a…
Diary
Spring Cannot Be Cancelled arrives on the doorstep. It is a gloriously illustrated book by Martin Gayford about his conversations…
Diary
Piers Morgan may have been the UK equivalent of a TV shock-jock, but there’s another side to him. I’ve known…
Diary
Safe spaces, diversity quotas, gender-neutral pronouns, culturally relative facts, heteronormative hegemony. Are my right-on credentials right on enough? Am I…
Diary
Santa Monica is a soothing place to be locked down. I moved here from New York for four months in…
Diary
Spring in Somerset — again. If someone had told me last February that I’d spend seven of the next 12…
Diary
Did Nicola Sturgeon lie to the Scottish parliament? A Holyrood committee into the now infamous Alex Salmond affair has been…
Diary
We weren’t long into Bruce Castor’s opening speech defending Donald Trump in his impeachment trial before we knew it was…
Diary
My great-great-grandmother, born on a Barbadian plantation and transported to what was British Guiana in the 19th century, gave rise…
Diary
I start the week with someone throwing faeces at me. I thought people were supposed to clap for doctors these…
Diary
Monday started with me opening my bedroom windows to let what little light there is come through, only to find…
Diary
The thing we most need to understand right now is how you deprogram people who have been in a cult.…
Diary
Real men are not supposed to confess to feeling fear. But I am frightened, second time round, about the plague.…
Diary
Among the greatest bores right now are those friends who insist on telling you, usually as if it’s some kind…
Diary
‘Stopping the diary/’ wrote Philip Larkin, ‘Was a stun to memory,/ Was a blank starting.’ I never really understood those…
Diary
I’m often asked why Channel 4 recently banned an episode of my show The IT Crowd because of ‘transphobia’. I…
Diary
I’m often asked when I’ll write a pandemic novel. I’m not sure I’d ever be tempted, though the backdrop of…
Diary
It is such a relief that Dominic Cummings has gone. Not for the sake of the country or the government…
Diary
Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, is a useful stop for journalists looking for some rust-belt Americana not too far from New York. The…
Diary
American expats have a conundrum on election night: do you stay up to watch the results come in or do…
Diary
Even in this bizarre year of Covid (for everybody) and ‘cancellation’ (for me), the last week or two has stood…
Diary
Here’s a tip. When the Foreign Office advises against going somewhere, hop on the next plane. The mandarins have advised…
Diary
The weird thing about Donald Trump’s handling of Covid-19, alongside all the other weird things, is that he has always…
Diary
I first visited Orford in 1970, at peak Cold War when this stretch of the East Anglian coast was one…
Diary
I have been in Istanbul, partly to research a French-born collateral ancestor of mine, Aimée Dubucq, who, according to legend,…
