Diary
Diary
For the first time since the terrorist attack on the Sri Lankan team six years ago, a Test match side…
Diary
Martin Williams, former head of the government’s air quality science unit, has declared that the reason we have a problem…
Diary
The aftermath of a general election is a difficult time for any party leader, unless like Mr Cameron you have…
Diary
For the 2005 general election, I had a party featuring a gigantic cheesecake with differentiated segments by allegiance. It contained…
Diary
I am writing a play about Dr Johnson and his Dictionary. It will be performed in Scotland later this year.…
Diary
I have escaped this rather depressing election campaign by retreating to my home in la France profonde — to be…
Diary
Lunch with the man who hanged Saddam. My irrepressible old Baghdad friend Mowaffak al-Rubaie, Ealing neurologist turned Iraqi national security…
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To the dentist. And for an extraction. I hadn’t had a tooth out in decades. But the twinges when I…
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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…
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It’s dangerous, in my line of work, to promise you’ll be anywhere by 8 p.m. I made this mistake recently,…
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This last week, in India, I visited six cities in seven days: Mumbai, Pune, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Calcutta and New Delhi.…
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Last week I went to the exhilarating English National Opera production of Wagner’s The Mastersingers — five hours of wonderful…
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It’ll be a Skype interview, says the producer from Greek television, and not live. In TV-speak that usually means not…
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All this fuss about Fifty Shades of Grey! I wonder how many people have actually read all three books? Sado-masochism…
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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…
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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…
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Moscow Here we go again. The rouble slides, then tumbles, and slides again. For those of us who remember the…
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I was once bundled into a police car in Palm Springs to explain why I didn’t have snow-tyres on my…
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An embarrassing confession: in the late 1960s, I was a Trotskyite. But that period of political adolescence has its uses.…
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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),…
