Diary
Diary
So far, what an infuriating election campaign. We have the most extraordinary array of digital, paper and broadcasting media at…
Diary
I am living in rustic seclusion while writing a book. Our only cultural outing of the week was to Newbury…
Diary
I never knew classicists could be so scary! Last week I wrote a Telegraph article saying classics exams had been…
Diary
It’s dangerous, in my line of work, to promise you’ll be anywhere by 8 p.m. I made this mistake recently,…
Diary
This last week, in India, I visited six cities in seven days: Mumbai, Pune, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Calcutta and New Delhi.…
Diary
Last week I went to the exhilarating English National Opera production of Wagner’s The Mastersingers — five hours of wonderful…
Diary
It’ll be a Skype interview, says the producer from Greek television, and not live. In TV-speak that usually means not…
Diary
All this fuss about Fifty Shades of Grey! I wonder how many people have actually read all three books? Sado-masochism…
Diary
Just back from Sri Lanka, a place I first went to in 1981. It was then a dreamy island. I…
Diary
An excellent test of character is a person’s response to being offered an Oldie of the Year Award. There have…
Diary
Dry January is tougher than it sounds. Well, for me anyway. It’s now been some 28 days since I’ve had…
Diary
As weather bombs brew in the north Atlantic, I’m roughing it by heading off to Rajasthan, and the literary festival…
Diary
Moscow Here we go again. The rouble slides, then tumbles, and slides again. For those of us who remember the…
Diary
I was once bundled into a police car in Palm Springs to explain why I didn’t have snow-tyres on my…
Diary
An embarrassing confession: in the late 1960s, I was a Trotskyite. But that period of political adolescence has its uses.…
Diary
Every year Christmas comes earlier and earlier in America. Cards, baubles and imitation trees were being sold in the big…
Diary
Soon after I joined the Sun as managing editor (among other things, I used to review novels for The Spectator),…
Diary
The most unfashionable show on television, Songs of Praise, has had a makeover. The BBC had apparently discovered that the…
Diary
Oh God, it’s happened again. Another evening where I’m surrounded by people I know personally or have interviewed, and I…
Diary
Two million pounds can buy you consideration for a place on a medical trial! Every year untold numbers of potential…
Diary
Do fish have loins? Last Tuesday, in a pretentious restaurant, I ordered a ‘loin of sea trout’. It looked just…
Diary
To the British embassy in Paris for a colloquium on ‘Napoleon and Wellington in War and Peace’ organised by our…
Diary
In order to promote the Dylan Thomas in Fitzrovia festival, I am trying to persuade Jason Morell, the director, that…
Diary
‘Please God, make me good, but not yet.’ I know the feeling. As I get older and more deeply retired,…
Diary
It was quite fun being named as the new writer of 007 — although actually I’d make a lousy spy.…
