Writer
Joined January 2011
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1,234 Photos and videos
8 Mar 2023
1950s diplomacy! The tremendous drinker George Brown launches insults with a chaser from Gaitskell and Bevan. Khrushchev concludes it's more difficult to discuss things with Labour than the Conservative government.
Always keep a hold of Eden, for fear of finding something worse.
7 Mar 2023
In 1956, Soviet leaders Nikita Khrushchev and Nikolai Bulganin visited London. All smiles, they met with the Conservative Prime Minister Anthony Eden.
It was deemed a charm offensive, but on one evening with the Labour Party, Khrushchev's charm was very much switched off. đ§”
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3 Mar 2023
I didnât have a view of Simon Case until today â difficult job, difficult choices. But has there been such a flaky Cabinet Secretary? Think of Hankey, or Armstrong, Trend, OâDonnell, and compare their work to the cynical WhatsApp messages sent by Case to âMatt Hancockâ.
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3 Mar 2023
Who would write such things, joking about locking people up and Premier Inn rooms, at a time of national mourning? I canât imagine Norman Brook indirectly facilitating an unsecured ÂŁ.8 million soft loan for the prime minister while he was in office. What has the UK come to?
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5 Mar 2023
Iâve missed something about the development of the UK Civil Service. When did it come normal for the Cabinet Secretary (one of Hennessyâs âgood chapsâ) to describe the PM as ânationally distrustedâ to a minister who would *inevitably produce a trivial memoir? He should step down.
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5 Mar 2023
This is fine but how about appointing an Ambassador (a person, not a car)? Must be two years and counting since the US has had proper representation in India. Wither diplomacy.
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27 Feb 2023
It would be great to have some more Betty Boothroyds, Barbara Castles, even Margaret Thatchers in the Commons now. You have to go back in time to look for such political and social talent.
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22 Feb 2023
A terrible policy. How can a 15-year-old be made stateless on the grounds they have an attachment to a country they have not visited? It encourages them to become a hungry ghost wandering the borderlands where the only option is to join up with criminals. theguardian.com/uk-news/2023âŠ
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20 Feb 2023
So many brilliant dramatic adaptations by Michael Bakewell. Has any writer had more successful radio plays over the years? It probably would not have occurred to Joan Bakewell in the 1960s that he would prove a more enduring playwright than Pinter. bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m0002câŠ
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16 Feb 2023
Yes, but Nietzsche had not read Wittgenstein.
16 Feb 2023
Nietzsche on the ahistorical happiness of cows still one of his most stunning passages
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12 Feb 2023
Omai was the first South Pacific ambassador to come to Britain, with Captain James Cook in 1774. Reynolds did the stunning full-length portrait at the NPG. How can this beautiful piece of social-political-diplo-artistic history be up for grabs? theguardian.com/commentisfreâŠ
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8 Feb 2023
Volodymyr Zelensky is a truly exceptional public communicator and political persuader. Other world leaders could learn from him.
8 Feb 2023
Zelensky is the undisputed champion of political speeches and PR. Absolutely world class.
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30 Jan 2023
Shoshana Zuboff ââOur information spaces must exist under public law and be governed by democratic institutions ... we will look back on the days of the information oligarchs like Musk and Zuckerberg as the first primitive missteps of a new civilisation.â ft.com/content/0cca6054-6fc9âŠ
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28 Jan 2023
The murder of Patrice Lumumba is one of the creepiest stories of Europeâs colonial unravelling. Learn of âone gold-capped tooth in a padded box,â kept in Belgium. Ludo de Witte told me about this 10 years ago, and now some sort of restitution has occurred. ft.com/content/eca1ba35-aa02âŠ
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24 Jan 2023
Our @ahmedabad neighbour the architect BV Doshi has passed at the age of 95. I admire his stylish low-cost urban buildings, though he stood behind many eminent structures too. Doshi was an exemplar. Indiaâs best adaptation and indigenisation of modernism happened in architecture.
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22 Jan 2023
Amazing words from Hanif Kureishi on the collaboration and respect found in a hospital gym. âIf you only watch the news and tv shows, you would have the impression that the world is only a harsh place, inhabited by money-grubbing and narcissistic individuals.â @hanifkureishi
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18 Jan 2023
Showing some temerity, Gideon Rachman comes out against the neologism of 2022 â âpolycrisisâ.
But if not polycrisis, what? 2020s geopolitics climate crisis has created a different threat to anything that came before in human history and needs a new conceptual framework.
16 Jan 2023
"Polycrisis" - now adopted by Davos - is rapidly becoming one of my least favourite cliches. Does it actually mean anything? Other than - "there's lots of bad stuff happening simultaneously and one thing can affect another"
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12 Jan 2023
Spare is so well written, whether or not you like the content.
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Patrick French retweeted
27 Dec 2022
Astonishing scenes as a Kabul university professor destroys his diplomas on live TV in Afghanistan â
âFrom today I donât need these diplomas anymore because this country is no place for an education. If my sister & my mother canât study, then I DONâT accept this education.â
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Patrick French retweeted
24 Dec 2022
The relative media & online silence around the Kurds murdered in #Paris by a man known to be racist & formerly violent towards immigrants is so loud right now.
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27 Dec 2022
Was Roy Plumley in his pomp ever as deferential as Lauren Laverne is today? We don't have to go back to the style of Sue Lawley to have at least an ounce of grit in a Desert Island Discs interview. bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001ghvâŠ
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