Diary
Diary
The week leading up to publication is a strange time for any author. You subject yourself to doing everything from…
Diary
Last October, in these very pages, I wrote with what is now annoying prescience, ‘Like almost everyone else in the…
Diary
São Paolo It was back in 2001 that my good friend Jim O’Neill of Goldman Sachs coined the acronym ‘Bric’,…
Diary
My surgery has been calling in all those over 75 for a special session with their doctor — a sort…
Diary
There’s no reason why you should have heard of me. No reason why you would have watched a Channel 4…
Diary
As any author will tell you, literary festivals differ widely. If you are invited to Willy Dalrymple’s Jaipur Festival, with…
Diary
When visiting Britain and Australia last November, I discovered that the mayor of Toronto, Robert Ford, is now the world’s…
Diary
You have to hand it to Supermac. Fifty years after the event, he is still running rings round them. The…
Diary
I now live in the hippest part of London, Shoreditch. It must be Tony Blair’s idea of heaven, a multicultural…
Diary
David Cameron gives Old Etonians a bad name. Critics deplore his Old Etonian-ness, his Lord Snooty Factor. Childish, but it’s…
Diary
It’s amusing to see serious journalists and authors struggling to use Twitter under instruction from their newspapers and publishers. They…
Diary
A year or so ago I was asked to sit on a committee that advises the government on how to…
Diary
One of the most dispiriting experiences currently available is any commercial break during a televised football match. In a Champions…
Diary
The long-discussed meeting between a group of climate scientists and Fellows of the Royal Society on the one side, and…
Diary
I’ve worked for the BBC for years and have been listening to the Today programme all my adult life, but…
Diary
For a minute I just stood there with my back against the wall, staring at the credit card receipt. Then…
Diary
Hard on the heels of the 90th birthday of Nicholas Parsons (10 October) comes the 65th birthday of the Prince…
Diary
Researching a new book on Shakespeare’s sonnets, I stumbled upon an astonishing piece of hitherto unnoticed evidence in a 16th-century…
Diary
The last time I wrote for The Spectator I was sitting in a prison cell. I sent the then editor…
Diary
ONE OF THE MINOR sociological treats of being appointed shadow education secretary is a frontbench view of David Cameron’s crimson…
Diary
A great night to be in Pittsburgh. The local baseball team, the Pirates, were attempting to reach their first play-offs…
Diary
So mysterious, the Conservative party. In every poll, our five most admired institutions are the NHS, the BBC, the Royal…
Diary
They say nothing beats the feeling of seeing your book in print. But for me, the proudest moment was presenting…
Diary
The looming centenary of the outbreak of the first world war offers an opportunity to break away from the Blackadder/Oh!…
Diary
‘Wider still and wider, may thy bounds be set,’ the ecstatic throng sang at the Last Night of the Proms.…
