As you can see, I have been reviving my flagging career as a Daily Telegraph blogger. This one prompted by the death of Sir Kenneth James (one of my distinguished predecessors as Ambassador in Warsaw) popp’d up this morning, remembering lost times at the Foreign Office : One key difference between […]
Wow. Here is a really sharp dissecting by Martin Continetti of President Obama’s recent conversation with the New York Times: My favorite moment is when the president mentions someone he’s been talking to. “I had a conversation a couple of weeks back with Robert Putnam,” Obama says, “who I’ve known […]
A busy day, with Sky TV coming round to the house to interview me about the draft speech by The Queen on the eve of 1980s nuclear war, except that it wasn’t. Here is piece I have written for the Telegraph on the clueless draft speech supposedly by HM The […]
Alas Canon Timothy Russ has died. Here is a fine obituary telling us about his fascinating life and deep historical interests: The question remained, however: who was the painter? The more Russ looked at the canvas, the more he became sure he knew the answer. It was not the “Lady” […]
My latest piece at Punditwire: In short, President Obama’s general observations about how the United States might tackle lingering discrimination and prejudice made sense. But the fact that he linked his remarks in such a personal way to the Trayvon Martin case – of all possible cases out there across […]
I have been away at Crawf Major’s University graduation ceremony and generally wilting in the heat of the sun and the England cricket attack. Some space for some writing now reappears, including a nice opportunity to write something for Scotland’s Sunday Post about Martin Luther King’s I have a Dream […]
The speech at the UN by young Malala Yousafzai from Pakistan is deservedly winning worldwide attention. Full text here. Malala of course would have been dead if Taliban lunatics had had their way: for them she is a “living symbol of the infidels and obscenity”. As it is she was […]
Michael Totten, an American writer who likes to follow the action very closely at first hand, comes clean on his many mistakes regarding the slow rise and fairly steep fall of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt: Look: the Muslim Brotherhood is not a mysterious new group that no one knows […]
My latest piece for PunditWire looks at some of the feeble messages emanating from President Obama’s much heralded Cairo speech in 2009 and wonders if they missed the point. It notes that the vast crowds in Cairo demonstrating against the Muslim Brotherhood have been identifying the current US Ambassador by […]
Long time no blog. I am in Warsaw to give masterclasses in Negotiation Skills to Polish officials. I have just spent the best part of an hour dictating into the computer someone fascinating observations on the latest revelations about Western electronic eavesdropping and the renewed political unrest in Egypt. All […]
