James Delingpole

I know lots of second world war veterans who rather enjoyed their war against the Germans. But I’ve never met one who enjoyed his war against the Japanese. As the Eastern Front was to the Western Front, so the Far Eastern front was to the European/North African front: the fighting was more implacably brutal, the conditions more ferociously grim, the chances of coming out in one piece notably slimmer. That’s why, in dark times like these, I find it of such great comfort to read a novel like Harold James’s The Scorpion Trap (Janus). It’s a brilliant fictionalised account by a former Gurkha officer of those hideous and terrifying early stages of the war when implacable Japanese overran our colonies.

At my uncle’s holiday apartment in Salcombe, Devon, is a tiny service lift so cramped and claustrophobic that you only use it in extremis: when you have heavy bags to carry up from the car, say, or a pile of sodden wetsuits which need drying on the balcony. At my uncle’s holiday apartment in Salcombe, Devon, is a tiny service lift so cramped and claustrophobic that you only use it in extremis: when you have heavy bags to carry up from the car, say, or a pile of sodden wetsuits which need drying on the balcony. Otherwise, it’s best avoided. Even the 40 seconds or so it takes to get from the bottom floor to the top are enough to give you the heebie-jeebies.

Dear Dave, There are few things more annoying than when an old friend writes to tell you what a hash you’re making of your life. Especially when the friend is a squitty hack/blogger and you’re a leader of the free world. God, how impertinent is that? But there are things that old friends can see that newer friends wouldn’t dare tell you even if they were capable of noticing. Yeah, you’re Prime Minister and I’m not, but I’m really not jealous. I don’t judge friends’ success by the titles or positions they’ve accumulated, or by how rolling in money they are or how powerful they’ve become.

By the time you read this I’ll be in the place that makes me happier than anywhere else in the world: a section of the Wye valley in beautiful mid-Wales, where I’ll spend every day paddling in streams and plunging in mill ponds and playing cockie-ollie in the bracken and wandering across the sunlit uplands, drinking in perhaps the finest view God ever created — the one across the Golden Valley towards the Black Mountains, and beyond that to the Brecon Beacons.

‘Dad, later, shall we go and see the Vaccines?’ says Boy. ‘Dad, later, shall we go and see the Vaccines?’ says Boy. ‘Yeah, er, sure,’ I say, trying not to sound as enthusiastic I feel. It’s not the Vaccines I’m interested in; all their songs sound the same, a louder variant on the three chords which open Blondie’s ‘Denis’ (Denee). Rather it’s the joy of realising that, at 12, Boy is still young enough — just — not to feel totally embarrassed at being seen to enjoy rock music in the company of his lame old dad. We’ve come to the Latitude Festival at Henham Park in Suffolk, me, the Fawn, Boy, Girl and a whole posse of friends, and it’s a very exciting moment for all of us.

‘Would you like a smoke?’ says the dude with the ponytail. ‘Would you like a smoke?’ says the dude with the ponytail. ‘Well, um, no, um, maybe,’ I say, checking the time. 11 a.m. Six hours to go before the speech. Five-and-a-half if you count the radio interview with the ex-mayor of San Diego, which I suppose I could cancel if things get messy. ‘How strong is it?’ ‘Oh, it’s fine.’ Yeah, yeah, I’ve heard that one before. On the other hand, this is California. Where the weed is now near as damn it legal, so long as it’s for ‘medicinal’ purposes. And this scenario does kind of qualify me, I think: stress due to excess travel; pre-speech nerves.

The most unsettling aspect of modern politics is that the Enemy is no longer plain in view. We may feel in our bones that we are as oppressed, disenfranchised and generally shat upon, in our way, as those who suffered under Nazism, Marxism and fascism. But the actual evidence doesn’t seem to bear this out. We’re free to fly wherever we want on our hols. No one is starving. We can vote. There are no death camps. We don’t dread the small-hours knock at the door. Our politicians consult focus groups because they feel they ought to care what we think. There are lots of channels on TV, not all of which reflect the ideology of the state. Being Jewish, gay or an intellectual are not crimes. (More’s the pity in the case of the last one.