So action finally replaced inertia, the White House's dithering gave way to resolve, and the warplanes and cruise missiles are flying over Libya just in time. It has all provided a useful reminder of how dangerous the world can be and how quickly and unexpectedly a crisis can evolve into combat. ...
"What do we want?" Um.... "When do we want it?" Er.... Well, knock me down with a fire extinguisher (preferably dropped from a serious height). British students are out on the streets protesting loudly against a tuition-fee hike. As one cynic observed, television scheduling must ...
Divorced, decapitated, dead"King Henry VIII's wives had it simple. For 21st-century fortysomethings"my contemporaries"the litany of woe is somewhat more extensive: dull, dumped, dejected, disillusioned, deranged, drunk, druggy, dried-out, dried-up, and often dangerously desperate. Only ...
Albert Einstein's damning-if-quirky verdict on Marie Curie's character was that she "has the soul of a herring." I am reminded of his words every time I hear yet another bloodless and desiccated scientist pronounce that God is finished and has no place in modern life. What spoilsports. And ...
From Pakistan to Turkey, from the Mediterranean to the Gulf, the insidious and colonising march of the burqa or niqab full face-and-body veil continues. Everywhere, anonymous and intimidating figures supposedly human, apparently female—can be sighted remote and shrouded from the very ...
A more useless and unnecessary thing than an expedition into this country could not be imagined… These are words lifted from the diary of Brigadier-General Henry Brooke who, in April 1880, took command of the British garrison in Kandahar just as the Second Afghan Revolt ignited. He was to ...
I was as polite to him as his breath would allow… Thus wrote Jane Austen in a letter to her sister, displaying some of the withering insight and laughing bitchiness for which the British upper echelons are deservedly celebrated. Class is back on the agenda. It baffles our foreign friends and ...
A thousand years hence, when they come with sieves and brushes to dig up the past, future archaeologists will no doubt discover the fingernails of Gordon Brown still left embedded in the doorframe to No 10 as he struggled to stay on. They will also detect the sulfurous trace of Peter Mandelson and ...
"Never heard of you...". What generosity of spirit. Some thirteen years ago now, the fellow had marched across a busy airport departure hall in order to deliver his crushing verdict. He entered the bookstore in which I was signing copies of my first thriller, picked up and ...
With all the finesse of natural born fraudsters, British politicians of whatever party are preparing the ground for swinging cuts to our national defense. Somehow, we are expected to believe that the modern world is safer and we can dispense with our current capabilities; somehow, we will be ...
