Rachel Johnson

Rachel Johnson presents her LBC show on Fridays at 7pm

Piers Morgan, Melanie McDonagh, Matt Ridley & Rachel Johnson

From our UK edition

24 min listen

On this week’s Spectator Out Loud: Piers Morgan reveals what Donald Trump told him from his hospital bed; Melanie McDonagh ponders the impermanence of email, amidst the Peter Mandelson scandal; Matt Ridley argues that polar bears – which are currently thriving – pose problems for climate enthusiasts; and finally, Rachel Johnson attends the memorial service for

Piers Morgan, Melanie McDonagh, Matt Ridley & Rachel Johnson

I embarrassed myself at Jilly Cooper’s memorial

From our UK edition

I am ‘sharing’ what follows as a public service. Also, as self-care in the hope that publicly shaming myself might stop me from doing it again. What can she be on about, you must be thinking, this time? My name is Rachel Johnson, and I have a chronic inability to leave the house on time,

An Englishwoman in New York

For this trip, I’ve had to divulge my social-media handles, blood group, shoe size etc, and have therefore assumed the brace position for being “processed” into the US, not least because I was once, under Joe Biden, incarcerated in a side room at JFK for having an apple in my hand luggage. The border protection

new york

A poignant and perfect send-off 

From our UK edition

We knew the church would be packed as Shelley had died so young. We knew the church would be freezing, as her funeral fell during the Arctic spell that whitened the bracken and iced over puddles the colour of Dairy Milk. When we drove into Simonsbath just after lunchtime, the sun was only grazing the

Enough with the Aga-shaming

From our UK edition

The headline smacked me between the eyes. ‘I can’t afford to turn my Aga on this winter,’ a nice writer called Flora Watkins whinged in the Telegraph last weekend (she once wrote a Spectator piece about the sublime awfulness of cockapoos that I wished I’d written myself). The sub-head continued: ‘Our writer’s once cosy Norfolk home is feeling the

The day I got naked with the Germans

From our UK edition

A man called Gianluca and I mounted the steps to the Friedrichsbad in pensive silence. We hadn’t made eye contact since we’d met in reception at our hotel, the divine Brenners, for this rendezvous with destiny. At the front desk, we were sternly reminded again of the dress code. We nodded. For the next three

Jilly Cooper was utterly unrivalled

From our UK edition

Jilly Cooper, the last great Englishwoman of my lifetime – after Queen Elizabeth II and Debo – has died. The lights are going out all over Rutshire. During her life, Jilly shone as an author, a friend and a person – the definition of effervescent. You had to meet her only once to become a

How not to be a spy

From our UK edition

Like our former ambassador to the United States, Lord Mandelson, I was once vetted by the security services. My brush with the spooks started, as in a Cold War spy novel, with a meeting on a bench in St James’s Park after a distinguished foreign policy wonk of my acquaintance had suggested lunch. As the

Nick Ferrari’s big fat Provençale wedding

From our UK edition

It was the morning after the night before and I was picking glass out of my leg by a pool, blotting the blood trickling down my calf with a navy spotted handkerchief. I was trying to work out how the shards of glass came to be there… and then it came back to me. But

The day I went to Noel Gallagher’s house for tea

From our UK edition

In front of me, a sea of lads in bucket hats and Adidas, with pints. Behind me, a sea of lads in bucket hats and Adidas, with pints. A luxuriantly barneted Richard Ashcroft is concluding his warm-up act and tells us to give it up for the greatest rock’n’roll band in the world, which those

My night at the Spectator summer party

From our UK edition

The first rule of the summer party is do not hold your summer party on the same night as The Spectator. It’s social fight club. You can only lose. This is a rule, however, that our Prime Minister, among others on ‘the left’, ignored to offer competing attractions. Zarah Sultana MP went to the most

I’ve lost control of the kitchen

From our UK edition

Looking back, I can pinpoint my fatal blunder. It was lunch. It was like the West allowing Vladimir Putin to help himself to the Crimean peninsula without a peep, basically. This is how it happened. My husband had invited two families to stay over the May bank holiday which bled into half term. For four

We’re spending the children’s inheritance on the dog

From our UK edition

After we bought a place on my father’s hill farm in 2000, I’d study the notices pinned to boards in post offices-cum-stores across Exmoor in a glazed trance. If we got a puppy, I reasoned, as I studied a blurry Kodak photo of a Cadbury-coated labrador gun dog’s melting mega-litter, I’d stop wanting another baby.

Bloodbath at West Chapple farm

From our UK edition

Fifty years ago, the blasted bodies of three unmarried siblings, members of the Luxton family, were discovered at a Devon dairy farm, set in a lush stretch between the ‘lavender haze’ of Exmoor and Dartmoor. The youngest member of the family, Alan, was 55. He lay in his pyjamas and work boots on the cobbles

The Lady vanishes

From our UK edition

The moment I stepped out of the Covent Garden sunshine and into the regal offices of the Lady magazine, it was like stepping into a 19th-century Tardis, and I was already in love. ‘I’m going for the editorship hell for leather,’ I wrote in my diary (published in 2010). ‘I’ve even been out and bought

My secret Ukraine trip with Boris

From our UK edition

Kyiv On the morning of 24 February, I woke just before seven as a tentative apricot dawn was spreading over scrubby flatlands dusted with light snow. The secret train was trundling into an unprepossessing town, houses scattered amid spindly pines, nothing to write home about. I didn’t even look for a station sign as they’d