Peter Hitchens

Peter Hitchens lived in Moscow from June 1990 to October 1992. He is a columnist for The Mail on Sunday.

Reform the BBC, don’t kill it

From our UK edition

Why do I now find that I, one of the BBC's most persistent critics, feel the need to defend the organisation that I have attacked so many times in the past? Because for all its faults I would rather that Britain had a public-service broadcaster than that the airwaves were sold to the fattest cheque book. The time has come for sensible reactionaries to rally round their old enemies at the BBC, and for the BBC to seek support among those moral and cultural conservatives it has spent too long despising.

God save the nation

From our UK edition

If the Archbishop of Canterbury does not crown our next monarch, then who will? The president of Europe? A multi-faith collective? Nobody at all? In which case, what sort of country will we then be and where will ultimate authority and legitimacy come from? Perhaps the prior question is why there should now be serious doubt about the Archbishop's role at the heart of our constitution. It says something about the state of the worldwide Anglican Church that it seems more interested in homosexuality than in anything else. Last month we were entertained by the Archbishop of Canterbury's U-turn on the appointment of a homosexual bishop. Now the Episcopalians have broken the taboo.