Diary
Robert Hardman: My private encounter with David Cameron and the Queen
David Cameron’s revelation that he sought ‘a raising of the eyebrow’ from the Queen during the 2014 Scottish referendum campaign…
Nick Robinson: Am I the new John Humphrys?
The nation is deeply divided. We can, it seems, talk of almost nothing else. Passions could scarcely be higher. No…
George Osborne: I tried to swap jobs with William Hague
I could be that rare thing: a former chancellor who is still a member of the Conservative party. Philip Hammond…
Rory Stewart: Am I still a Conservative?
My parents gave me a subscription to The Spectator in 1984, when I was 11. When I was 12, I…
Prue Leith: My plan to get real catering back into hospitals
Picture the scene: we are filming the opening link for The Great British Bake Off. Here I am in the…
Brace yourself for no deal
I AM up on the far north-west coast of Scotland, where the weather is changing every five minutes under vast skies…
Rachel Johnson: which political party should I join next?
I lay low during the ‘season’ as I can’t think what to say to people any more. I went to…
Jacob Rees-Mogg: I’m prejudiced against the Oxford comma
It is rare that losing a day at Lord’s for a Test match is welcome. I had expected to be…
Penny Mordaunt: I’m fired. Job done
I begin the week in Bamako, Mali, with a crackly telephone call to Commodore Dean Bassett, UK Maritime Component Commander…
Paul Dacre: I made Boris Johnson cry
So the party of family values has chosen as leader a man of whom to say he has the morals…
Nick Robinson: I’ve underestimated Boris ever since our Oxford clashes
By this time next week the Johnson era will surely have begun. ‘We can, we will, we must now escape…
Petronella Wyatt: I’ve been turned into a curiosity – and Boris is to blame
I am beginning to feel like a sort of fairground curiosity: one of those pickled things in jars that Victorians…
Joan Collins: The night I got a TV star to flash Boris Johnson
It has been a spring of party madness in London and New York. I was lucky enough to have several…
Will Boris Johnson break up the Union?
I spent the early part of last week in London, filming what are known in the television trade as PTCs…
History will wonder how we trusted Boris with Britain
I am besieged by media folk asking when I shall make good on a four-year-old threat to flee to Buenos…
Simon Schama: I’m on tour – singing. Yes, seriously
It was when the kindly folk at the Theatre Royal Haymarket said ‘You’ll be in Paul Whitehouse’s dressing-room’ that it…
Everything under the sun: The glory of garden centres
Don’t you just love garden centres? You have to be mad to go on a sunny Sunday morning in the…
History will be kinder to Theresa May than we have been
Recording the BBC Radio 4 Reith Lectures has brought me to five cities and five styles of questioning. Cardiff had…
A presidential pardon for my ‘miraculously shrinking crime’
I owe my return to these pages to the pardon I have received from the President of the United States.…
As a gay Jewish man I did not expect to be spat at in a west London street
There are many places where a gay Jewish couple wearing yarmulkes wouldn’t feel comfortable walking down the street. I didn’t…
Paul Mason: The Brexit party is great news for Labour
Multiple copies of a Labour leaflet for the European elections are being shared on messaging apps by horrified activists. Not…
Call her Nancy: how David Cameron tried to change my name
Sometimes life takes an unexpected turn. So it was for me a few weeks ago when, driving up the A1…
Helen Lederer: The day I went viral in the Claridge’s lavatory
The best moment of my Easter ended up being an impromptu debate with the delightful comedian Sarah Millican about the…
Roger Scruton: Should I forgive the journalist who got me fired?
I travel back from London with the St Matthew Passion filling my head, after the moving performance from the Elysian…
Roger Stone: I will be vindicated
Undisclosed location, Florida In January, when heavily armed FBI agents swarmed my south Florida home to arrest me for a…
