Jonathan Aitken

Tuesday

Jonathan Aitken

The UAE and Oman could be the big winners from the Iran war

Sixty years ago, I first gazed out on the Strait of Hormuz from the Musandam peninsula of Oman. I was there as private secretary to my godfather, Selwyn Lloyd, who had been Britain’s foreign secretary during the Suez Crisis. The previous evening our host, Sultan Said bin Taimur, the ruler of Oman for nearly 40 years, commented gloomily: ‘When two fish are fighting in these waters, the British are behind it.’ I estimate that I must have made at least 250 visits to the Gulf states in the intervening six decades.

Jonathan Aitken

Take it from an ex-con — the outrage over prison books is misplaced

From our UK edition

When I was doing my time in HMP Standford Hill, a strange pair of heavily perfumed Korans and Bibles were delivered to one inmate, ostensibly to help him with his 'studies in comparative religion'. As intended, the perfume threw the sniffer dogs off the scent. But a suspicious prison officer found a significant quantity of heroin stuck between the pages of these holy books. This was an example of 'parcelling it,' con-speak for getting drugs into jails. So Chris Grayling, the Justice Secretary, has a point now that he is trying to restrict the supply of books into prisons. But not much of a point: such examples are real but rare.

Saturday

Jonathan Aitken

Gus Carter, Paul Wood, Jonathan Aitken, Laura Gascoigne and Flora Watkins

From our UK edition

35 min listen

This week: Gus Carter reports from Rotherham (01:10), Paul Wood asks whether anything can stop full-scale conflict in the Middle East (05:55), Jonathan Aitken takes us inside Nixon's resignation melodrama (16:55), Laura Gascoigne reviews Revealing Nature: The Art of Cedric Morris and Lett-Haines (26:08), and Flora Watkins reads her notes on ragwort (31:24).  Produced and presented by Oscar Edmondson.

Thursday

Jonathan Aitken

My ringside seat at the Nixon resignation melodrama

From our UK edition

American politics seem particularly febrile in 2024. The sitting President has withdrawn from the election, days after his predecessor was shot campaigning at a rally in Pennsylvania. But American democracy is by nature restless and tumultuous. It’s worth remembering that 50 years ago this week, Washington was in turmoil over the question of whether Richard Nixon was going to resign. Those early days of August 1974 seem like yesterday to those of us who became swept up in them. At the time I was a 31-year-old MP, five months into my first parliamentary term as an opposition backbencher. My summer recess took me to the home of a hospitable Anglophile hostess in Georgetown.

Thursday

Jonathan Aitken

Between Heaven and ‘L’

From our UK edition

A.N. Wilson has had a tempestuous journey on the sea of faith. His first port of call was St Stephen’s House, in Oxford, the Anglo-Catholic seminary where he trained for ordination in the Church of England. He jumped ship at the end of his first year and travelled to the wilder shores of atheism, writing the polemical pamphlet Against Religion: Why We Should Try To Live Without It. Unable to follow his own advice, he created a niche for himself as the biographer of influential Christians such as John Milton, Hilaire Belloc, Nikolai Tolstoy, C.S. Lewis and John Betjeman, while also penning studies of the life of Jesus and the mind of St Paul.

Friday

Jonathan Aitken

We need body scanners to tackle the prison drug problem

From our UK edition

As every prisoner and ex-prisoner knows the most frequently used route for drug smuggling into all categories of jails is 'bottling it'. This is the crude but effective smuggling technique of inserting a package of drugs into an inmate’s anus. Unless prison staff receive a tip off that a particular prisoner is acting as 'a mule' for this route they will likely avoid detection, as routine anal searching at prison receptions is rare. It is not generally realised how many prisoners have to go in and out of prison during their sentences for court appearances, requisition order hearings, hospital check-ups, legal town visits, or transfers to other establishments.

Thursday

Jonathan Aitken

Jonathan Aitken’s diary: My life as a Christian outreach speaker

From our UK edition

The last time I wrote for The Spectator I was sitting in a prison cell. I sent the then editor a poem called ‘The Ballad of Belmarsh Gaol’. Instead of printing it in the poetry column, Frank Johnson put it on the magazine’s cover. It received what is euphemistically called ‘a mixed reception’ — so mixed that I have never again tried my hand at verse. In those dark days 14 years ago I was wrestling with my self-inflicted agonies of defeat, disgrace, divorce, bankruptcy and jail. As I contemplated my non-future, its only certainty was that I would never again be in demand as a public speaker or as a political commentator in the media. But life is full of surprises.

Saturday

Jonathan Aitken

Diary – 1 May 2004

From our UK edition

Washington Not since Randolph Churchill’s The Fight for the Tory Leadership has any book of political reportage caused as much of a stir on either side of the Atlantic as Bob Woodward’s latest bestseller Plan of Attack. In the last few days I have listened to detailed dissections of the gospel according to Woodward. I have discussed his book in the West Wing of the White House, at student seminars at Georgetown University, during dinner with my fellow columnists of the American Spectator and at the hospitable home of its editor-in-chief, Bob Tyrrell. I even had a conversation about Woodward in a place where his fierce anti-war opponents would no doubt like to see President George W. Bush — a high-security Texas prison.