Saddam Hussein’s mountain of documents now awaiting analysis by UN experts has temporarily flummoxed those in hot pursuit. It has thus bought a little more time before a final reckoning is visited upon him. He is playing a weak hand with customary tactical adroitness. But the underlying realities have not changed. Despite seasonal injunctions to
THERE is something eerie, and a little sinister, about the rise of the Campbell-Millars, as Alastair Campbell and his longstanding partner, Fiona Millar, are known in north London. Their rise started in the 1980s when they were young, unknown and ambitious. They ingratiated themselves with Neil and Glenys Kinnock: helping with the shopping and being
In San Francisco in the late 1970s you could cover the entire modern art gallery scene, both commercial galleries and temporary exhibitions in museums or other public institutions, between a leisurely Saturday breakfast in Sausalito on the far side of Golden Gate Bridge – eggs Benedict and coffee perhaps – and a late lunch in
Have a look at the current ten-pound note. ‘I promise to pay the bearer on demand the sum of ten pounds,’ it says. The ‘I’ who is speaking appends her signature. She is someone called Merlyn Lowther. She describes herself as Chief Cashier, and she signs, as the note states, for the Governors and Company
Ten years ago, Bristol council were apparently thinking of demolishing the building which now houses the newly opened British Empire and Commonwealth Museum. This would have been a great pity, for it was designed by Isambard Kingdom Brunel as part of the world’s first purpose-built railway terminus – Bristol Temple Meads (completed 1841). And the
A cowboy name. Heavy on the consonants and crudely clipped, the first three letters doubling as an instrument of discipline, it is as solid and unpretty as the man it refers to. Given recent challenges, a perfect moniker for a captain of the British aviation industry. ‘I’ve been an airline chief executive for over ten
Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone, prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone. For the next 24 hours I’ll be glued to my television set watching the final moments of Celebrity Big Brother. Admittedly, it hasn’t proved quite as compelling as the first series, but it has been pretty entertaining nevertheless.
The 19th annual Parliamentarian of the Year awards, sponsored by The Spectator and by Zurich Financial Services, were presented by Michael Martin, MP, Speaker of the House of Commons, the guest of honour at the awards presentation luncheon held at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel, London. The guests were welcomed by Sandy Leitch, chief executive of
I once got bashed up by the late John Smith. It was at one of those charm-offensive lunches in the City, and he had asked why London’s booming financial firms kept all their jobs in the South-east rather than sharing them round the rest of the country. My mistake was to suggest that dispersing jobs
Istanbul I have no doubt that Allah moves in mysterious ways. But if He has chosen Recep Tayyip Erdogan as the instrument of His vengeance on the infidel, He must be given credit for startling originality. Erdogan, whose party won a landslide victory in Turkey’s recent general election, may be feared in some quarters as
Tony Blair tells us continually that the British armed forces are ‘the best in the world’. They are fighting fit, says the government, and straining at the leash to do battle with Saddam Hussein. It is all the more frightening, therefore, that in truth the Prime Minister is about to deploy a British military force
No British prime minister has dominated the landscape so obviously, with so little obvious effort or for so long, as Tony Blair. You can check through the lists fruitlessly as far back as they go to find a comparable example. Maybe Palmerston, who attained power only in ripe old age, enjoyed a comparable period of
DON’T PANIC! The enemy has anthrax, plague, botulism, poison gas, dirty bombs and ferries packed with TNT that make the Provisional IRA seem about as dangerous as Disgusted of Tunbridge Wells. But Mr Blair has announced that we should stay calm. Is he mad? Last time, in 1997, I almost did panic. It was just
Caught on camera at a Remembrance service last week, Queen Elizabeth appeared, rather unexpectedly, to be crying. It was quite a shocking thing to behold: I had never seen our Queen cry before. Perhaps it was just the cold, dank weather getting to her, biting into her bones. Or maybe it was another of those
As befitted someone who spent half his life looking at it, my father had a beautiful watch. Although I don’t recall the make, I do remember how sleek and elegant it was. My father’s whole life seemed to be ruled by time and by his pathological hatred of being late. I remember once sitting in
To say that there is a crisis in the Cognac world is to understate the case. The word scarcely hints at the sorry spectacle that is unfolding. This is more than just a tale of falling sales and mounting stocks, though the extent of the industry’s financial woes are real enough. More than anything, the
Like all junkies, my most important relationship is with my dealer. He must be cajoled and wheedled to remember me first, I must pay any price he asks and be grateful for the chance, and in no circumstances can there be the faintest whisper of complaint about the quality of the supply. To be sure,
I find it difficult to remember, in retrospect, why I thought it would impress Ranulph Fiennes – a man who has crossed the Antarctic unaided and who sawed the ends off his own, frostbitten fingers – if I arrived to interview him on a bicycle. I could have gone by cab and been waiting calmly
One of those bad courtroom dramas on television might have used the scene as a denouement, and then been panned by the critics for its unrealism. A good and faithful servant, accused of felonious behaviour and facing prison, is acquitted thanks to a surprise intervention by a third party. The third party happens to be
If a portrait ‘happened to be on the easel’, wrote Henry Angelo of Thomas Gainsborough, ‘he was in the humour for a growl at the dispensation of all sublunary things. If, on the other hand, he was engaged in a landscape composition, then he was all gaiety – his imagination was in the skies.’ What