Diary
I’m calling my removal from office ‘the great betrayal’
I’ve always maintained I go to Fermanagh for sanity, and after the past few months, I need a return to…
British broadcast news has gone badly wrong
I’ve worked for some media thoroughbreds — including the Financial Times, ITN and CNN — so I know the sense…
Why do my American friends keep asking me to marry them?
My diary has been filled with dental appointments, reflecting a truism that American dentists pray for British teeth. The tally…
What Donald Trump told me about Theresa May
Following my abrupt departure from Good Morning Britain after declining to apologise for disbelieving Meghan ‘Princess Pinocchio’ Markle, I’ve been…
My enduring love for Ewan McGregor
In the New York Times, the celebrated journalist Maureen Dowd describes Crieff as ‘a sleepy town in Scotland’. Well. There…
At the V&A, we’ve done some Marie Kondo-style reordering
‘We humour them when they suggest absurd reforms, we placate them with small material comforts, but we heave sighs of…
The Trump nightmare isn’t over
What would happen to the Republicans after Donald Trump? That has been one of the pundits’ favourite themes in the…
In Hartlepool, I’m aiming for a noble defeat
By the time you read this you may know if the Tories triumphed in the Hartlepool by-election — or if,…
The truth about the government and ‘herd immunity’
I spent much of the 1980s and 1990s reporting on company chief executives who didn’t understand the distinction between mine…
Why I don’t regret leaving the BBC
I have just had my second jab and it poses a dilemma. As an assiduous Covid rule-taker, I have been…
My painstaking preparations for Prince Philip’s funeral
The files arrived marked ‘STRICT EMBARGO’ and ‘CONFIDENTIAL’ and ‘FORTH BRIDGE REVISED’ and stamped with various crests and insignia. My…
The hidden death toll of lockdown
The last patient I treated was 105 years old. She has lived through two world wars, a depression and at…
In America, politics has become a form of religion
When I finally head back to church this weekend, after a year of Covid-avoidance, it is going to feel a…
Scottish Unionists must rethink – and fast
Spring Cannot Be Cancelled arrives on the doorstep. It is a gloriously illustrated book by Martin Gayford about his conversations…
Why I won’t be replacing Piers Morgan
Piers Morgan may have been the UK equivalent of a TV shock-jock, but there’s another side to him. I’ve known…
The poetic beauty of science
Safe spaces, diversity quotas, gender-neutral pronouns, culturally relative facts, heteronormative hegemony. Are my right-on credentials right on enough? Am I…
Hollywood can’t believe Harry’s dissed Queen Oprah
Santa Monica is a soothing place to be locked down. I moved here from New York for four months in…
George Osborne: Why I’m going into banking
Spring in Somerset — again. If someone had told me last February that I’d spend seven of the next 12…
Salmond, Sturgeon and why The Spectator went to court
Did Nicola Sturgeon lie to the Scottish parliament? A Holyrood committee into the now infamous Alex Salmond affair has been…
Trump is being defended by Foghorn Leghorn
We weren’t long into Bruce Castor’s opening speech defending Donald Trump in his impeachment trial before we knew it was…
Minority groups should ignore the anti-vax charlatans
My great-great-grandmother, born on a Barbadian plantation and transported to what was British Guiana in the 19th century, gave rise…
The horrifying toll of lockdown on the poor and mentally ill
I start the week with someone throwing faeces at me. I thought people were supposed to clap for doctors these…
Vaccination is the only way out of this catastrophe
Monday started with me opening my bedroom windows to let what little light there is come through, only to find…
The cult of Donald Trump
The thing we most need to understand right now is how you deprogram people who have been in a cult.…
The comment that baffled Boris
Real men are not supposed to confess to feeling fear. But I am frightened, second time round, about the plague.…
