Diary

I slept only between the hours of 5 and 6 a.m, thanks to self-induced terror tactics. My son Adam stayed over, having offered to accompany me for my angiogram – or ‘the procedure’. He kindly moved my old Honda Jazz round the corner and parked his car in my space overnight. The procedure revealed that a) I am impossible to sedate – I once told a full joke under anaesthetic; b) I am neurotic; and c) I didn’t, after all, need a stent. So why was I so breathless? Could it be because, at three score and ten... er... plus eight, I find myself in love? Prescription: I must walk more, breathe more, change medication and cool it. Adam came back to check on me and rebuked me for moving my car – which I hadn’t, because the doctor said that I shouldn’t drive for a day or two.

For the past year or so, I’ve been involved in selling The Spectator as well as editing it. A long auction involving moguls, sheikhs and an act of parliament has finally produced a winner. The financier Sir Paul Marshall has become the 14th proprietor of this magazine. His faith in our prospects is reflected in the size of the deal: £100 million, five times what we were valued at when we split from the Daily Telegraph in 2005. We had 22 interested parties, some of the greatest names in British and European publishing, all bidding each other up. The result stands as a spectacular vindication of what my colleagues have achieved. I think it’s safe to say that the death of political and cultural magazines has been somewhat exaggerated.

Now we have a Labour government, it would be nice to feel repertory will return to the National Theatre. It used to be possible to come to London for a week and see six plays. Audiences loved it. New writing spoke to old in ways which enriched both. Today, you’re more likely to see Ibsen, O’Neill, Molière and Marlowe in the West End. What happened to the library of world drama? The new practice is to offer only a couple of straight runs, sometimes first-rate. So there’s nothing to stop any random producer saying: ‘Hey, the Lyttelton seems to be empty this autumn, can I hire it to do one of my shows?’ Shaw and Granville Barker wanted to assert that theatre was art, not commerce. The model was European, not American.

Can one have too many friends? I asked myself this question as we prepared yet another dinner party for ten people, at which I ate and drank far too much as usual. Forget bikini body – it’s kaftan time in Saint Tropez at the moment for me. We’ve been at our villa in the South of France for nearly three months this summer and during that time we have hosted 34 guests, who stayed anywhere between three days and two weeks. We’ve hosted two daughters, one son, in-laws and cousins, several dozen friends and one baby granddaughter, and they have kept Percy and me on our social toes. But we really truly enjoy it, as most of the time the majority of our guests know how to behave in other people’s homes. However, some most definitely do not.

Chicago Everyone in the Democrats’ Convention centre – a bleakly corporate sports stadium on the edge of Chicago – is giggling. It’s an atmosphere properly described as bonkers. The Democrats have gone from wake to wedding party with no intervening period of sobriety. People whoop as they meet, knowing how miserable they were prepared to feel with Joe Biden still on the ticket, and how freed from misery they are now. I thought Chicago an oddly dangerous choice for the Democrats (1968 and all that) but I was wrong: I had forgotten what a great city it is. The centre is grand, the hotels capacious and snooty, one of them the actual place where the phrase ‘smoked-filled room’ was coined – by a wire reporter covering a party meeting.

Would-be veep Tim Walz has opened Pandora’s box with his use of the W-word to characterise Donald Trump and his running mate (no sniggering at the back: this W is for ‘weird’). Because, let’s face it, a heck of a lot of politicians are way-out weird, aren’t they? It’s practically part of the job description. If we start calling them all out on it, the currency’s going to devalue fast. My thesaurus devotes nearly half a page to synonyms for weird. ‘Freaky. Wacko. Odd. Eccentric. Crazy. Off the wall. Out to lunch…’ Well, sure, that’s pretty much Trump to a T. He is uniquely odd, but those adjectives neatly summarise plenty of politicos this side of the pond too. Liz Truss. (Oh, come on, don’t get all Truss-defensive – you know she was weird.) Theresa May.

I’m a hopeless technophobe. I dislike the stylish laptop I’m using and its subdued pad pad pad. I still long for the clatter and ting of my old typewriter. It was a sturdy soul, utterly obedient, only needing a new ribbon occasionally. It lived for 40 years before being interred in a quiet corner of my attic. I’ve had several computers since and they have all been tricksy. I often fantasise about tracking down another ancient typewriter that could be coaxed back into service. There are still several writers determinedly tapping away. The American novelist Danielle Steel has achieved a billion sales by working on a 1946 typewriter. Jilly Cooper wrote her recent bestseller Tackle! on a red manual called Monica.

The Polish constitution delineates no role for the foreign minister’s wife. In fact, the foreign minister’s wife is not mentioned in Polish state documents of any kind. Nevertheless, there are times when, as the Polish foreign minister’s wife, I find that I have no choice but to bear witness to great historical events. On the Friday following the British election, the Polish foreign minister – better known as an occasional Spectator diarist – was informed that the new British Foreign Secretary planned to visit Poland on his first trip abroad. Because we had planned to spend that weekend at our country house, north-west of Warsaw, and because there is a nearby airport, it was suggested that the official talks be organised there.

There was hardly an election poster to be seen on the roadside during a two-hour drive from London to the country. The British do not appreciate this miracle. In Poland five days before an election, every other fence would be disfigured with photoshopped faces. Our lovely lunch hosts seemed resigned to the coming Red Terror: a purge of the remaining hereditary peers in the House of Lords, a new relationship with the European Union, inheritance taxes. I tried to cheer them up with a piece of Central European wisdom: there is always time for a magnum of champagne between the revolution and the firing squad.

Gareth Southgate has always been a man interested in life outside the football circus. When he played for England, I remember chatting to him at the carousel at Fiumicino airport before a vital France 1998 qualifier in Rome. As he waited for his bag (there’s always baggage with England), Southgate reflected on what he would see on this visit to the Eternal City. Sistine Chapel? Colosseum? La Dolce Vita? No chance. His itinerary was airport, hotel, training ground, hotel, stadium, airport; basically the External City. Southgate accepted his professional lot and looked forward to the day he could return and explore. He certainly made up for it when he moved to punditry.

On Tuesday night I was body double/understudy for the brave, brainy, beautiful Rachel Riley, at a packed ‘support Israel’ evening. The keynote speaker was the brave, brainy, beautiful lawyer Natasha Hausdorff. I was slightly out of my depth but I hope I provided some light relief. Natasha was dazzling in defence of beleaguered democracy, but the facts are sombre and the audience went home a little more concerned about our future in the diaspora. Anti-Semitism is known to be a light sleeper. I fear it may become insomniac. I’ve been arguing vehemently with my brother Geoff about everything and nothing for 75 years. Inevitably, these days, our arguments are about Israel.

When I interviewed Rishi Sunak in February, I told him I thought his Rwanda plan for ‘stopping the boats’ was an expensive, unworkable dud and offered him a £1,000 bet to be paid to a refugee charity that he wouldn’t get any asylum-seeker planes taking off before the next general election. To my surprise, the Prime Minister clutched my outstretched hand and accepted the wager, sparking considerable revulsion. As the HBO comedian John Oliver put it: ‘Set aside the grossness on display here, imagine what a monster you have to be to put me in a position of genuinely wanting Piers Morgan to win something?’ Now Sunak has admitted no planes will leave for Rwanda before 4 July. Therefore, I told him on X that I’d like the £1,000 to go to the British Red Cross. But No.

For the first time in more than two decades we are dog-less, and the house feels horribly empty. Our Patterdale terrier, Bonnie, led a long, vigorous life but her balance had gone and her breathing was heavy, so we called the vet. Patterdales are little imps and Bonnie was ‘known to the police’. I never discussed politics with her but she liked Lib Dems; that is, she liked biting them. A public footpath bisects our garden. Most ramblers escaped intact but Bonnie had a habit of nipping tall, grey-ponytailed men with walking poles. She nipped the vicar, too, tearing a cartoon-style square out of the seat of his chinos. The language! Despite that, we remain hopeful Bonnie is in doggy heaven. ‘St Peter won’t know what’s hit him,’ said my wife.

I have had a good idea. It may even be an important idea. See what you think. The other day I interviewed Keir Starmer for my weekly podcast, Rosebud. It’s so called because of the Orson Welles film Citizen Kane. Rosebud, you will recall, was the trade name of the sledge on which Kane, as a boy, was playing the day he was taken away from his home and his mother. My podcast is about the early memories of people in the public eye. I wanted to talk to Sir Keir because he aspires to be prime minister and I didn’t know much about him. We met at St George’s Park, the FA’s national football centre, near Burton upon Trent. He had had a full morning, chairing a shadow cabinet meeting, giving soundbites about football and avoiding giving soundbites about Angela Rayner.

Every week I check the weather in Longyearbyen, the main settlement in Svalbard. It’s about as close as you can get to a gulag with a human face – a heap of wooden houses where around 2,000 people live. It has a couple of stores and restaurants, and even a very small university. Outside the two streets, there’s much open space in which to walk. You don’t have to go far before being greeted with warning signs: ‘Don’t walk beyond this line without a gun! Danger of polar bears!’ At the door to all the cafés there is another sign: ‘Please leave your guns at the entrance!’ How can you not love a settlement like this? I can imagine living here. My life would be simultaneously a holiday and hard work – as I always imagined communism.