U.S. TV producer Caryn Mandabach first got the idea for the TV series Nurse Jackie when she visited her goddaughter, who was working as a nurse in hospital in a tough New York neighborhood. On the subway, Mandabach found herself riding next to a woman balancing a basket on her head. The basket began to shudder and a serpent appeared at …
“There is no such thing as bad publicity—except your own obituary,” joked the Irish writer Brendan Behan. Since I blogged on Friday about the controversy surrounding Prince Andrew aka the Duke of York and his role as trade envoy for Britain, initially sparked by his contacts with Saif Gaddafi but quickly shifting to his private …
Yesterday’s ballot for the parliamentary seat of Barnsley Central resulted in abject defeat for Liberal Democrat candidate Dominic Carman, who came in sixth place, polling fewer votes than the far right British National Party (BNP). This wasn’t the first time the doughty anti-BNP campaigner Carman performed worse than the party he …
There are, it seems, three ways to endanger your job if you’re a public figure: you can call into a radio show to denigrate your boss as a clown, you can claim an affection for Hitler, or you can be linked to the Gaddafis. Howard Davies, the head of Britain’s prestigious London School of Economics, has just tendered his resignation over …
Sometimes press conferences involve as much diplomacy as, well, diplomacy. Before British Prime Minister David Cameron and Afghan President Hamid Karzai emerged from their London bilateral at lunchtime today, a Downing Street official told assembled journalists that a tight schedule permitted only two questions to the leaders. This did …
Can Germany’s teflon Defense Minister survive plagiarism accusations? That was the question posed in this piece by William Boston, published just yesterday and explaining how the popular, plausible, ultra-posh Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg, until recently tipped as a possible successor to Angela Merkel, came to be in such a pickle. Well, we …
It seems only yesterday (actually it was last November) that students from the London School of Economics and Political Science, an institution of such international renown that like the BBC it usually goes by a three-letter acronym, led protests about changes to the funding of higher education in Britain. Once again, LSE students are …
Ireland’s national broadcaster RTE has just published an exit poll that suggests the votes currently being counted will add up to more than just a change of government in the country. As every opinion poll, and our own correspondent, predicted, Fianna Fail has been ousted and Fine Gael’s Enda Kenny looks set to be the next Taoiseach, or …
Tony Blair’s 2004 meeting with Muammar Gaddafi was momentous by any standards. Blair’s arrival in Libya marked the first visit to the country by a British prime minister since 1943, and proceeded against protests by some relatives of the Lockerbie dead. His purpose was to encourage Gaddafi’s perceived desire “to make common cause with us …
Travel broadens the mind—unless your destination is a news-free bubble.
In London I supplement a daily fix of print, online and broadcast news by talking to primary sources including politicians and their back-room teams, in person, on the phone, by email and via Twitter and Facebook. During the past week I’ve been in California, a …
