Crystal Serenity

I thought I’d hate cruising. Two years later, I’m hooked and tomorrow I head off on my latest trip, this time from Lisbon to Cape Town aboard Silver Sea.

It wasn’t always plain sailing. In 2024, my son gave me 72 hours before I abandoned my first cruise. He was so convinced I’d hate it that he organised a family sweepstake.

He lost spectacularly.

I’d spent years dismissing cruising as something other people did. Floating hotels, organised entertainment, too much food and the prospect of being trapped with hundreds of strangers.

Newlyweds and nearly-deads, as the old joke goes.

Then I stepped aboard Crystal Symphony and discovered I’d been wrong about almost everything.

Since then I’ve travelled thousands of nautical miles, crossed the equator and kissed the fish, watched humpback whales bubble feeding, encountered bears in Alaska and visited places I might never otherwise have considered. I’ve even found myself standing at the front of a ship’s theatre delivering enrichment lectures rather than sitting in the audience.

But I’ve also discovered that cruising isn’t always plain sailing.

Which is why tomorrow I’m joined by who is managing director and owner of luxury cruise specialist agency Mundy Cruising for a Substack Live in which I’ll be picking her brains about everything I’ve learned, everything I’ve got wrong and everything I still don’t understand.

While I’ve become something of a convert, Edwina knows the business from the inside.

How do you choose the right ship? Does size really matter? Is it worth paying extra for an upgrade? Which cabins should you avoid? Are ship excursions worth the money, or are you better off making your own arrangements?

And what about those supposedly all-inclusive fares that sometimes turn out to be rather less inclusive than you imagined?

We’ll discuss seasickness, solo cruising, tipping, dress codes and why the most glamorous itinerary in the world can be ruined by choosing the wrong ship.

I’ll also be asking Edwina about the things the glossy brochures don’t always tell you, including the environmental impact of cruising and the pressure enormous ships place on smaller destinations.

And I have a few stories of my own, including one involving a stranger’s boxer shorts in a ship’s laundry room.

Join Edwina and me tomorrow, Wednesday 21 October, at 5pm UK time.

https://open.substack.com/live-stream/417465?r=1w13kp&utm_medium=ios

Whether you’re planning your first cruise, have already sailed around the world or wouldn’t dream of setting foot on a ship, we’d love your questions.

I certainly have plenty of my own.

I’ve spent the best part of five decades asking questions for a living. Some people might argue I’ve asked rather too many.

But old habits die hard.

So I’ve started something new on Substack. It’s called Just One More Question… and the idea is really quite simple. Me having a chat with my mates.

Fortunately, quite a few of my friends happen to know an awful lot about some very interesting stuff. Politics, policing, royalty, defence, music, travel. You name it. And rather than keep those conversations to ourselves, I thought you might like to join us.

Nothing too formal. No shouting matches. No politicians desperately trying to avoid answering the question. Just a proper conversation, a little humour and, inevitably, just one more question.

This Sunday I’m joined by my good friend , a former Metropolitan Police officer who spent three decades on the force.

And we’re tackling a rather extraordinary question.

How on earth did Thames Valley Police manage to get it so wrong over Andrew?

We will be talking about the confusion over the search warrants for Andrew’s gaffs. What went wrong, who was responsible and what should have happened?

Obtaining a search warrant isn’t supposed to be a casual exercise. There are legal requirements, safeguards and procedures for very good reasons.

So what happened here? Was it a procedural mistake, a misunderstanding of the law or something more serious? And what does it tell us about police accountability?

Graham knows how policing works from the inside. I know how to ask questions. Between us, we might get somewhere.

And you can ask questions too.

Join us Sunday at 5 pm for: Just One More Question…

Put the kettle on, pour yourself a glass of something nice and pull up a chair.

After all, you’re among friends.

https://open.substack.com/live-stream/409248?r=1w13kp&utm_medium=ios

I was listening to Radio 4’s Today programme this morning while walking the dogs when something Zia Yusuf said made me stop in my tracks.

The Reform UK politician was talking about the death of a 73-year-old woman in Wales who died after waiting more than 23 hours for an ambulance.

He went on to argue that 300 people a week were dying needlessly because of delays in emergency care. Britain, he said, needed to prioritise British people until the country ’got back on its feet’.

He went further, claiming Labour and the Conservatives prioritised foreign nationals over their own citizens.

Really?

Angela Darlow had suffered a stroke at home. An ambulance was called immediately, but it took 23 hours and 20 minutes to arrive. She died five months later.

The coroner concluded that Mrs Darlow died of natural causes, contributed to by ‘opportunities for investigation and treatment lost because of how long the ambulance took to arrive’. The coroner raised concerns about significant demand, delays in handing patients over at hospital, patient flow and the availability of social care.

What she didn’t do was attribute Angela’s death to immigration.

So I posted on X asking Yusuf to explain the connection he appeared to be making between immigration and her death.

I pointed out that a family’s tragedy deserved better than political point-scoring. I added that perhaps I’d misunderstood him and I meant it. I’m perfectly happy to be corrected.

Well, goodness me, what a reaction: One chap informed me that everything was worse because more than ten million extra people were using the same services.

Another pointed out that I live in the Cotswolds, where apparently I’m protected from the realities of immigration.

Someone else decided I must have private healthcare.

Then came the familiar accusation that I don’t live in the real world.

I do love it when complete strangers tell me what my life looks like.

However, buried among the insults there was a perfectly reasonable point.

One contributor said the coroner wouldn’t have mentioned immigration because that wasn’t her job. Her responsibility was to investigate the circumstances of the death, not the causes of population growth.

Fair enough, but that’s rather the point, isn’t it?

If a politician chooses to invoke a woman’s death while arguing that British people are being disadvantaged by immigration, surely we’re entitled to ask what evidence connects the two.

It doesn’t mean immigration isn’t putting pressure on public services. Of course population growth affects demand for housing, schools, hospitals and pretty much everything else. It would be absurd to pretend otherwise and it is a very real issue in my local community where new housing is being built at a record rate.

However, it would be equally absurd, in my view, to suggest that every problem in the NHS can be traced back to people arriving in Britain.

We have an ageing population. We have hospitals struggling to discharge patients because there aren’t enough care places available. We have staffing shortages and an ambulance service that has been under enormous pressure for many years.

What about that figure of 300 deaths a week? Well, I checked and it relates to Royal College of Emergency Medicine estimates of excess deaths associated with long waits in A&E in England. It isn’t a figure showing that 300 people are dying every week because of immigration. Angela Darlow died in Wales, where the same body estimates the figure at around 18 a week.

During the Radio 4 interview, something else caught my attention about Zia Yusuf said. He described Reform’s plans for a specialist immigration enforcement agency. That’s apparently an organisation whose officers would go to work each morning with one goal: the detention and deportation of people living here illegally.

Critics have compared the proposed Deportation Command with America’s ICE. Yusuf has rejected that comparison, so what then would this new agency look like in practice?

Who would be detained? How would people be identified? Who would have the power to make those decisions? And what would happen when mistakes were made?

Britain already has immigration detention powers. So what would this organisation do differently? I really don’t think those are unreasonable questions. Nor do I think asking them means I’m somehow in favour of uncontrolled immigration.

I’m not.

It’s perfectly possible to believe that Britain needs effective border controls and still want to know how a proposed enforcement system would operate in practice. Yet judging by some of the replies to my post, even asking for clarification is enough to have me accused of living in an ivory tower. Or, in my case, a property in the Cotswolds.

All I can say is thank goodness some of those pitchforks are blunt.

I’ve been a journalist since 1978. I’ve interviewed politicians of every persuasion, listened to more excuses than I care to remember and often been accused of asking questions people would rather I hadn’t.

That just comes with the territory. Having skin like a rhino certainly helps. What I find increasingly depressing is how quickly an argument becomes personal.

Instead of answering the question, people want to know where you live, how much money you have and whether you’ve ever had to wait for an NHS appointment.

Which of the above changes the evidence?

I’m not pretending immigration is an easy subject because it most certainly isn’t. Nor am I suggesting people shouldn’t be angry about the state of public services. They have every right to be.

But Angela Darlow’s family waited almost an entire day for an ambulance. Imagine that. Twenty-three hours of waiting, wondering when help is coming.

Her family deserves answers about why that happened and what is being done to stop it happening again.

If immigration played a part, let’s see the evidence and if it didn’t, let’s not pretend it did.

If I’ve misunderstood Zia Yusuf, he is more than welcome to put me right.

I’ll even listen. After all, it’s what I’ve been doing for nearly fifty years.

Three years ago today, Hamas terrorists crossed into Israel and killed around 1,200 people. Another 251 were taken hostage. It was the deadliest day in Israel’s history.

What followed has been catastrophic for Palestinians too.

Nearly 74,000 people have since been killed in Gaza, according to Gaza health authorities. That figure, reported by Reuters, does not distinguish between civilians and combatants.

Two terrible statistics. Two communities suffering continuing and enormous grief.

So what does that have to do with a planned march through London today?

Well, students have chosen today to march in support of Palestine on the third anniversary of the 7th October attacks.

The Metropolitan Police asked the organisers and those planning to take part to choose another day. That appeal fell on deaf ears.

So why can’t the police simply say: You can protest, just not today?

My friend Graham Wettone, a former Metropolitan Police officer with considerable experience of public-order policing and intelligence, says it isn’t that simple.

He tells me - and disgruntled followers on X - that under the Public Order Act 1986, police can impose conditions on a march and they have done so today.

Protesters must form up at Lincoln’s Inn Fields in central London by 12.30pm, follow a prescribed route to Russell Square and finish their rally by 2pm.

They have also been told they cannot cover their faces to conceal their identity.

Break the conditions and those responsible risk arrest.

However, the Met says the bar for asking the Home Secretary to ban the procession altogether has not been reached. To do that, police would need to believe there was a risk of serious disorder which couldn’t be dealt with in any other way.

Having spoken to Graham, I thought I understood it.

Then I started digging.

Graham has been arguing with all comers that Section 12 of the Public Order Act allows police to change the time, place and route of a march, but doesn’t simply allow them to say: Come back tomorrow.

Fair enough.

Except, Graham my friend, I found something rather interesting during research this morning.

In February this year, Home Office minister, Sarah Jones was asked in Parliament about exactly these powers. Her answer said police could impose conditions including the “location or route, time and date”.

Hang on.

Time and date?

If that’s right, why couldn’t the Met say: Not 7th October. Come back on the 8th, people?

The same Home Office answer then says the powers do not allow police to ban protests or prevent them taking place.

Confused?

Me too.

And this is where it gets interesting.

Telling marchers they can start at noon rather than six o’clock is clearly changing the time.

But telling them they can march tomorrow rather than today feels rather different. You haven’t banned their protest altogether, but you have stopped them protesting on the day they chose.

In this case, of course, the day is rather the point.

It gets even more confusing.

Two months after that written answer, Sarah Jones was explaining these powers in the Commons. This time she described the sort of conditions police can impose as changing where a march goes, limiting its hours or limiting the number of people taking part.

No mention of changing the date.

So which is it?

Can the police change the date or can’t they?

And when does changing the arrangements for a march become, in effect, banning it?

Back to Graham who tells me there is another part of the Public Order Act, Section 13, which deals with actually prohibiting marches. But that is a much bigger step, with a much higher legal hurdle, and requires the involvement of the Home Secretary.

There are human rights considerations too.

Here comes more technical stuff:

Peaceful assembly is protected under Article 11 of the European Convention on Human Rights, so the police cannot simply interfere with a lawful protest because lots of people, however understandably, find the timing offensive or upsetting.

Lord Walney, the former government adviser on political violence and disruption, thinks there is a problem here too and Graham highlighted this to me and his other followers on X yesterday.

During debates on the Crime and Policing Bill, Lord Walney argued that the Government’s plans for dealing with the cumulative impact of repeated protests did not go far enough. Sometimes, he said, the authorities need the ability simply to say no.

The law has actually been changed since then.

This is all a lot to process for my Essential Law for Journalists training, dating back almost 50 years, but stick with me.

In June, new legislation came into force requiring police to take account of the cumulative disruption caused by repeated protests when deciding whether to impose conditions.

That still doesn’t give us a straightforward answer to today’s question.

Could the Met have moved this march from 7th October to another day?

The Home Office appears to say the date can be changed. Graham says it’s not that simple and the Met takes a middle line and asked the protesters to change the date rather than ordering them to do so.

Perhaps the fact that we are having this argument at all tells us something and that is that protest has changed enormously since the Public Order Act was passed 40 years ago.

Social media can mobilise thousands of people at extraordinary speed with organisers sometimes difficult to identify.

Today, the Met says it has not identified an individual prepared to accept that they are the organiser of this march.

Personally, I cannot imagine choosing 7th October for this particular march. Others will argue that, after nearly 74,000 Palestinian deaths, protesting on this anniversary has a particular significance of its own.

The law has to accommodate both views and without appearing to taking sides.

What it also needs to do is tell the police, the protesters and the rest of us, in language we can actually understand, what the police can and cannot do.

Forty years after the Public Order Act became law, perhaps Parliament needs to have another look.

If, like me, you’d like somebody to explain all this without needing a law degree and the need to trawl through Hansard, then may I respectfully point you in the direction of my mate Graham.

He is launching his own Substack, looking at policing from the other side of the cordon. Public-order tactics, protests, face coverings, what officers can do, what they can’t do and, crucially, why.

I suspect there will be plenty for him to write about.

And I already have his first question:

Graham, if the Home Office says the police can change the date, why do you say they can’t?

Sources: UK Parliament; Hansard; Public Order Act 1986; Crime and Policing Act 2026; Metropolitan Police; Reuters.

I arrived at Mar Hall expecting to stay for just the one night. Three nights later, I was still there, wondering whether they might notice if I simply refused to leave.

Mar Hall sits in a glorious spot just outside Glasgow, looking across the Clyde towards the Kilpatrick Hills beyond. It is the sort of grand Scottish country house hotel that could easily have relied on its architecture and location to do all the heavy lifting.

It doesn’t.

The building certainly makes a jaw dropping first impression. Gothic stonework, sweeping staircases, vast floor to ceiling windows and a design team who clearly had the good sense not to make the interiors feel like a museum.

There are splashes of colour everywhere. A fabulous pink carpet running up from the main entrance to reception and contemporary furniture sitting comfortably alongside all that Victorian grandeur.

Then there are the views. I enjoyed a tasty shakshuka breakfast sitting beside one of those enormous windows while Scotland went through its paces outside: hills, water, woodland and skies that changed every few minutes. There are traditional porridge oats if you prefer, and plenty of other choices besides. Whatever you order, breakfast comes with an awesome panorama.

My room was just as impressive. Comfortable and luxurious without being fussy, with a wall of glass looking past the 18 hole golf course to the rolling hills beyond. The sort of room where you actually want to spend time rather than simply sleep, shower and leave. I even sat outside on the terrace, in Scotland, in October!

All sounds sensational doesn’t it, but that’s not why I stayed for three nights.

I have travelled all over the world and stayed in some extraordinary places. Beautiful buildings are lovely, Egyptian cotton is sumptuous and a perfectly mixed drink at the end of the day is fabulous. But none of that is what makes you remember a hotel.

People do.

On my first night, I had settled in by the fire with steak frites and a gin martini, with staff who somehow knew when to chat and when to leave me to it. Sometimes investigative journalism requires sacrifice!

That is the art of it. Not hovering, not fussing, not asking whether everything is all right, but rather its noticing, remembering and knowing when to chat and when to disappear.

Arlene, Andrea, Olivia, Eve, Alan, Victoria, Callum, Monica, the bar team, the breakfast team and so many others did it brilliantly. Every single member of staff I interacted with were warm, funny, kind and professional without it ever feeling rehearsed.

Chapeau, too, to Resort Director Chris, because a team like this doesn’t happen by accident.

I did fancy a venture out and immediately the team had suggestions. Loch Lomond is only about 20 minutes away, which is absurdly convenient for somewhere that feels this peaceful. I took to the water and was reminded why people become slightly evangelical about this part of Scotland. On a bright autumn day, with the sun bouncing off the loch and the hills rising around you, it is magnificent.

Returning to Mar Hall for a massage followed by afternoon tea,, I feel set up for whatever the coming months might have in store.

The foreign owners have clearly invested enormously in creating a beautiful hotel and the interiors, bedrooms and spectacular public rooms all deserve recognition. But the greatest asset is it’s the people.

I came for one night. I stayed for three.

I think that probably tells you everything.

Grandma died when my Mum was just 18.

Later, Mum was the last of five children to marry so she and Dad lived with Grandad to keep an eye on him. When my sister and I came along, we completed the archetypal 60s family unit: Grandad on “babysitting” duties when necessary, Mum and Dad working to bring home the bacon.

Jacqueline and I spent a lot of time with Grandad pottering around the house, digging in the garden, him overseeing us playing outside. He would sometimes dust off his favourite trilby and take us into town on the bus for gifts or sweeties.

One day, Grandad had been playing bowls and came home mid-afternoon as we arrived back from school. Later, he was sitting in his chair watching television while my sister and I padded about. Jacqueline noticed first that he had slumped in the chair.

We were young girls and didn’t know what to do. This was before mobile phones and Mum was at work, so my sister called for an ambulance while I ran all the way to the bus stop as fast as I could to meet her. Mum and I rushed home together and arrived as the emergency services did.

It was all very much a blur after that, and for quite some time. I was 16 and studying for my O levels, visiting the hospital when I could and trying to comprehend what a stroke might mean for a man who had been as strong as an ox.

Grandad survived, but he could no longer walk, talk or do anything for himself. He had been a coal miner and had also done his bit by driving ambulances during the war. Suddenly, he needed help with everything.

There was very little outside support and it quickly became apparent Mum would have to give up work to care for him.

We did not have a separate bedroom for him. He slept in the sitting room, so in the evenings we turned off the television and the light until he fell asleep, before switching them on again and carrying on with our evening.

A greater challenge involved access.

There were several steep steps from the pavement to our front door. I learned the technique of pulling a not insignificant sized man backwards up those steps in his wheelchair. It should have been an Olympic sport but, instead it was just what needed to be done to get Grandad into the house.

I still vividly remember all the practical things because they were part of everyday life: the steps, the chair, the television, the light. But I also remember learning to love my new grandad. He could no longer tell me what he wanted or who he had been before the stroke, but he had a wonderful smile which lit up his face whenever we greeted him.

Six years after being struck down, Grandad died at the age of 76.

This is why I listen when politicians talk about social care. I know what the words can mean inside a normal family home.

Prime Minister Andy Burnham knows something about it too. His father, Roy, lived with Alzheimer’s and spent time in a care home. Roy died earlier this month, and Burnham has spoken about his father’s illness as one of the reasons he wants to reform.

Our families had different experiences, separated by many years. But we recognise the desire to make something better for the next person after watching somebody you love need help.

Burnham wants to create a National Care Service. It is an appealing promise. The harder questions are what care it would provide, when people could get it, who would do the work and the most challenging, how we would pay for it?

My mum paid for my grandad’s care by giving up her job. She gave him her time, her energy, her unwavering love and a great deal more besides.

When we talk about the cost of social care, all of the above belongs in the calculation too.

One possibility being discussed is care that would be free to those who need it. That would come at a considerable cost, and the government has yet to explain how it would be paid for.

Burnham has also raised the possibility of reviewing the pensions triple lock, though as I write this article he has announced no change and the last Labour Manifesto said it would remain untouched for the course of this parliament.

The triple lock guarantees that the state pension rises each year by whichever is highest: inflation, average earnings growth or 2.5%. I can see why people would resist changing it. A reliable pension matters enormously, especially to someone whose only income is the state pension.

But I also think we have to be willing to ask how care could be paid for, and whether those of us with comfortable incomes should contribute more. That raises difficult questions of its own.

People save for retirement in good faith.

Some have money tied up in a home but very little monthly income. Others struggle to eat or keep warm. Of course those who have spent a lifetime of work should expect the state to keep them safe in their later years.

That’s just what a decent society does, doesn’t it?

As a result, there will be fierce resistance to changing the triple lock and heartfelt support for better social care. Can we afford both? I don’t know.

What I do know is that doing nothing has a hidden cost. It is paid by people who need care and by the families rearranging their lives around it.

Sometimes it means learning, at 16, how to haul your grandad backwards up the front steps.

I loved him and I am glad we could care for him at home but I wish my mum had had more help.

So yes, I care about social care. I think most of us will, sooner or later.

At the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville. And yes, that’s Dolly looking over my shoulder.

I’ve been backstage at the Grand Ole Opry, squeezed into the tiny Bluebird Cafe and found myself leaning against the bonnet of a baby-blue Bentley chatting to Garry Tallent of Bruce Springsteen’s E Street Band. I even made it out to Franklin where stars like Justine Bieber and Nicole Kidman lived at the time.

And yet, somehow, I never made it to Dollywood which I now regard as a fairly serious error of judgement.

The memories came flooding back this week because today is 9/25, Dolly Day and I say we make it stick.

Star Wars has managed to turn May the 4th into an annual global celebration on the strength of one rather good pun, so why shouldn’t Dolly Parton have her own permanent place in the calendar?

We can celebrate the songs, the rhinestones, the extraordinary hair and some of the best one-liners after Dorothy Parker.

“People always ask me how long it takes to do my hair. I don’t know. I’m never there,” is one of my favourites, closely followed by: “It costs a lot of money to look this cheap.”

Then there’s: “I’m not offended by all the dumb blonde jokes because I know I’m not dumb and I’m not blonde either.”

She certainly wasn’t dumb. Behind the wigs, nails, boobs and rhinestones was an extremely shrewd businesswoman who wrote some of the most enduring songs of the past half century.

Among them were 9 to 5 and I Will Always Love You, which Elvis Presley wanted to record until his manager Colonel Tom Parker told her they would expect half the publishing rights. Dolly refused. She later said she cried all night because she desperately wanted to hear Elvis sing her song, but she held on to it and years later Whitney Houston recorded the version that became a worldwide phenomenon.

Full disclosure, Dolly and I once had a disagreement, although she didn’t actually know she was having it.

It was Glastonbury in 2014 and Dolly was on the Pyramid Stage in front of an enormous crowd. I was watching at home and tweeted: “Oh, Dolly is miming. How disappointing.”

Well.

Jason Manford disagreed, Stephen Fry offered a technical explanation about the television sound and then Boy George waded in with: “Leave our Dolly alone!”

There followed a rather entertaining Twitter spat in which George threatened to reveal the secrets of my fake tan and, for reasons I can no longer remember, my insteps. I called him a bitch. Affectionately, I must add.

Dolly and her people insisted she had been singing live but I still think she was miming, but it didn’t make me like her any less. In fact, what interests me more as I look back at her life, though, isn’t Dollywood or even the music. It’s what she decided to do when she had enough money to do pretty much anything she wanted.

Dolly was one of 12 children and grew up in a tiny cabin in the Great Smoky Mountains. Her father, Robert Lee Parton, was a farmer and construction worker who she described as one of the smartest people she knew, but unfortunately Robert had never learned to read or write.

So in 1995 when fame offered a way of giving back, she started sending books to children. From birth until the age of five, children receive a free book through the post every month, addressed to them personally. It began in her home county of Tennessee and now more than 325 million books have been given to children.

Imagination Library continues to deliver more than 3.5 million books every month, including to families here in Britain.

Let’s just pause to reflect that we live in an age where frivolous billionaires spend fortunes on super yachts and rockets to take them to the edge of space. Dolly could have indulged herself in all sorts of similarly spectacular ways, but one of the things she chose to do with her money was make sure children she would never meet grew up with books.

All because her dad couldn’t read.

She said he was prouder of the Imagination Library than anything else she had achieved.

So let’s never forget the magnificent Dolly Parton and make sure 9/25 is forever known as Dolly Day.

And next time I’m in Tennessee, I’m definitely going to Dollywood.

Diana was dead.

In the days that followed, the country seemed to operate according to different rules. People who had never met her cried in the streets. Flowers piled up high outside Kensington Palace. The Royal Family was subjected to a level of public anger I had never witnessed before.

Years passed, her boys grew up, her ex-husband remarried and life continued on. Now, almost three decades later, her brother Charles Spencer has taken us straight back there. His new book, Swan Song: Diana, My Sister, contains allegations so extraordinary that Buckingham Palace has broken its usual rule of: Never complain, never explain.

Spencer says that when the then Prince Charles telephoned him after Diana’s death, he sounded “giddily elated”, comparing him to a lottery winner. He also claims that during a furious argument over the funeral, Charles told him: “Rest assured, we’ll forget her soon enough.”

The Palace response has been devastatingly polite. It said the King understood that “fraternal grief can cloud reason, affect judgment and colour memory”. The latest version of “recollections may vary” issued by Buckingham Palace after some of the more outrageous claims by Prince Harry in his Spare era.

Spencer has subsequently accused the King of gaslighting him and there, I think, lies the real story.

Whose memory of Diana do we believe?

I covered Diana for years. I interviewed people who loved her, who worked for her and people who found her totally exasperating. On that terrible Sunday morning in August 1997, I was on air as Britain began to comprehend that a 36-year-old woman who seemed to be entering a new chapter of her life was suddenly gone. I’ve written about that morning in a previous Substack article.

What I remember most vividly about the days afterwards was not what was happening inside the palaces but the level or grief outside of them.

The public mood changed by the hour. Shock became bewilderment and then that turned to anger. Why wasn’t the flag flying at half mast? Why weren’t the Royal Family in London? Why did the institution appear unable to understand what millions of people were feeling?

We now know William and Harry were two children at Balmoral who had just been woken up to be told their mother was dead. Protecting them from the extraordinary public frenzy outside those gates doesn’t look quite as inexplicable today as it did to some people back then.

Which brings us to perhaps the most troubling part of Spencer’s account.

He claims Buckingham Palace took control of Diana’s funeral and that the Spencer family was expected simply to comply. He also argues that having William and Harry walk behind their mother’s coffin helped insulate Charles from possible hostility from the crowds.

Could it really have been that cynical?

Millions watched those two boys walking behind their mother’s coffin. William was 15. Harry was 12. At the time it became one of the defining images of the funeral. Today we are much more inclined to ask whether two grieving children should ever have been placed in that position.

I think absolutely not, but Spencer goes considerably further.

He revisits Diana’s unhappiness before the wedding, claiming she wanted to abandon the engagement after discovering a bracelet Charles had bought for Camilla. He says Diana later told a friend that Charles had admitted before their wedding that he wasn’t in love with her. He writes about her eating disorder, her despair and periods when she contemplated taking her own life.

At Westminster Abbey in 1997 he delivered one of the most memorable eulogies I have ever heard. It was furious, protective and unmistakably aimed at both the press and the institution into which his sister had married.

He promised that Diana’s blood family would protect William and Harry.

Twenty-nine years later he has written a book containing intensely private details about their mother and devastating allegations about their father correcting what he regards as a false history of his sister.

Others will reasonably ask whether Diana would have wanted all of this excavated again.

I don’t know the answer nor do I know what Charles said in private telephone conversations nearly three decades ago. There were two men on those calls and their recollections are now profoundly different.

What I do know for sure is that one alleged prediction has proved spectacularly wrong. If Charles (Windsor) really did say, “we’ll forget her soon enough”, we had other ideas.

Nearly 30 years after her death we are still discussing Diana. Still publishing books about her. Still dissecting photographs, conversations and marriages. Still debating what the monarchy did to her and what she did to the monarchy.

And perhaps most remarkably, a woman who died in 1997 remains capable of generating a full-blown royal crisis in 2026.

Forget Diana?

We never even came close.

Friends had spent years waxing lyrical about seeing the world while enjoying all the comforts of home, but I simply couldn’t see the attraction of a floating hotel. What if I was bored and wanted to get off? What if I didn’t gel with the other people on board? What should I wear? Would I be seasick? And what about sea days, when there was literally nowhere else to go?

In truth, I’d probably swallowed most of the clichés about cruising. Organised entertainment, too much average food, newlyweds and nearly-deads.

No thank you.

Then, two years ago, my love of travel finally overcame my resistance. I’d been told that approaching a city from the sea gives you a completely different perspective, so after years of saying no, I decided to give it a go.

Crystal stole my heart almost from the moment I stepped aboard. Even the rather surreal experience of finding myself folding a stranger’s boxer shorts in the laundry room so I could use the tumble dryer failed to put me off.

I’ve since travelled thousands of miles by ship, crossed the equator where I kissed the fish, and experienced the International Date Line while skirting the edge of a major storm. Groundhog Day at sea.

I’ve been up close and personal with a mama bear and her cubs, watched humpback whales bubble-net feeding, fed 100-year-old tortoises, yomped up an active volcano and stood inside an ice cave on the same day. In a plot twist not even I saw coming, I now sometimes stand at the front of a ship’s theatre giving the lectures I once sat listening to.

I’m a convert, but not an unquestioning one. Cruising can be wonderful, but it can also be frustrating, occasionally disappointing and, if you get it wrong, expensive.

So here are the things I wish somebody had told me before I first ventured aboard.

• Choose the ship as carefully as the itinerary

This is probably the most important thing I’ve learned because, however seductive the list of destinations, the ship is your home for a week, a month or, if you’re on a world cruise, several months.

Size matters, as does the number of passengers. Think about the restaurants, service, cabins and entertainment, and whether your idea of a pleasant afternoon involves bridge and a lecture or waterslides and karaoke.

I discovered fairly quickly that while I’m partial to a bit of karaoke — That’s Life, while you’re asking — and I love a quiz on a sea day, apart from that I’m not particularly into organised fun. Give me an interesting lecture, somewhere comfortable to read, a decent gym, good food and a deck where I can walk off at least a fraction of what I ate the night before and I’m perfectly happy.

On that first cruise I became part of an unofficial early-morning lap-deck family. We were all ages, shapes and sizes, united by one common purpose: trying to undo the damage from dinner.

• Big ship or small ship?

There is no right answer because they offer completely different experiences.

Crystal was my introduction to cruising and inevitably remains special to me. Cunard offers something different again: luxury, grandeur and a sense of occasion that makes simply walking around the ship part of the experience.

Then I watch some of the truly enormous ships coming into port carrying several thousand passengers and my immediate reaction is that they aren’t for me. But I’m also intrigued. What facilities do they have on board? How much can you do? And perhaps, paradoxically, does being one among thousands offer a degree of anonymity?

At the other end of the scale, I’m about to discover something completely different again on a tiny Hebridean Island Cruises ship, before crossing the Atlantic from Lisbon to Cape Town with Silversea.

Ask me again after those.

• Where you sleep matters

Cabin choice matters more than I realised when I started.

If you are worried about movement, midships is generally the place to be. You should feel less motion than you would forward or aft — get me with the lingo — and, on many ships, you are also conveniently placed for restaurants, lifts and other amenities.

• Sea days are not boring

I was convinced they would be, but I couldn’t have been more wrong.

There is something wonderfully indulgent about waking up, looking outside and seeing nothing but sea, with no sightseeing timetable, no car waiting and no need to rush ashore.

On my first cruise I discovered lectures on everything from Churchill and Europe between the wars to how to wear pearls. There was bridge, a golf pro, a library, a gym and a cinema.

The latter was screening Saltburn, which I decided I definitely did not want to watch surrounded by silver-surfer Americans who appeared to think they were about to see a modern-day Downton Abbey.

I went for a walk instead.

But what about if you suffer from seasickness 👇

Read more

Cards on the table: I bloody love Ed Sheeran.

I think his music is superb. Tenerife Sea is a particular favourite of mine. I’ve seen him perform in both hemispheres and love the way he interacts with crowds made up of fans of all ages.

The normally tousled hair, the T-shirt, the guitar and that slightly improbable air of a bloke who has wandered in from the pub and somehow ended up filling some of the biggest stadia on the planet.

Ed has spent years being the nice guy of British pop.

When he appeared on stage dressed as a clown to surprise Taylor Swift at Wembley during her Eras Tour, it was properly heartwarming stuff.

I’ve interviewed him Down The Line, ie not standing next to me, and he was suitably charming. In fact, I was rather jealous when my son sent me a photograph of the two of them posing together.

So what on earth has happened for Billy Bragg to issue the rather dire warning on Radio 4 that the next 48 hours could define whether Ed gets to keep that nice-guy image?

Well, as you may know, Macklemore used his support slot on Ed’s tour at New Jersey’s MetLife Stadium to speak about Gaza, the West Bank and Palestine.

Several stadium owners subsequently refused to allow him to perform. Among those publicly involved was Robert Kraft, billionaire owner of the New England Patriots and Gillette Stadium, who has said his objection is not to support for Palestinians but to what he regards as Macklemore’s history of rhetoric and imagery offensive to Jewish people.

Macklemore rejects accusations of antisemitism.

Nevertheless, promoters dropped him. Since then, the other supporting acts have pulled out in solidarity, including Finneas, Lukas Graham and Aaron Rowe. Beoga, the Irish group who have been performing as Ed’s touring band, have gone too.

Billy Bragg says Sheeran should cancel his remaining American concerts and give the billionaires behind the Macklemore row “a bloody nose”.

That may be putting it rather dramatically. But Bragg has identified the question Sheeran can no longer avoid.

What does he do now?

Macklemore says the pair had a series of difficult conversations and has actually been surprisingly sympathetic towards his friend’s predicament. The tour promoter says the decision to remove Macklemore followed venues saying they would not allow him to perform.

Sheeran says it wasn’t his decision and perhaps, contractually, it wasn’t, but Macklemore’s views are hardly a surprise. They must have known what they were getting when he agreed to tour with Sheeran.

So the man who can fill a stadium armed with little more than a guitar and a loop pedal suddenly finds himself looking rather lonely on the bill.

Cancelling the concerts, as Billy Bragg suggests, sounds wonderfully simple from the outside however, it isn’t.

Tens of thousands of people have bought tickets. Some will have booked flights and hotels. Hundreds of people make their living from a tour of this size: technicians, drivers, security staff, caterers, local crews and countless others whose names never appear on the poster. Why should they pay the price?

Why should a 14-year-old who has saved her pocket money to see Ed Sheeran lose her night out because of a political argument she had absolutely nothing to do with? She just wants to see her idol perform.

Medley from Melbourne

Bottom line: this is Ed Sheeran’s tour. His face is on the poster. His fans bought the tickets. His name fills the stadia.

He doesn’t have to endorse Macklemore’s views. In fact, one of the things I rather like about Sheeran is that he hasn’t spent his career lecturing the rest of us about how to vote, what to believe or which cause we must support.

There is something refreshing about a superstar who mostly seems interested in writing songs and playing them, but this is no longer simply about whether Ed Sheeran wants politics on his stage.

If a stadium owner can say one of your performers is unacceptable because of something he has said, does the artist accept it? Challenge it? Move the concert? Cancel it?

What happens the next time? This is what Billy Bragg means when he says Ed is in a right pickle.

Personally, I wouldn’t rush to cancel the tour. Too many people who had nothing to do with this row would suffer. I’ve seen the excitement of the youngsters in Melbourne in February who knew every single word of his songs and belted them out at the top of their voices. I walked out of the stadium with families still buzzing from the adrenaline of a brilliant set. Those people matter.

But nor do I think Sheeran can simply strum the opening chords in Philadelphia on Saturday night and pretend the last few days haven’t happened. Perhaps he tells the venues that Macklemore remains welcome wherever they will allow him to perform. Perhaps he says explicitly that he won’t personally remove an artist for expressing a peaceful political opinion.

Perhaps he challenges the stadium owners to explain publicly precisely where their boundary lies between political speech and unacceptable speech. Or perhaps Billy Bragg is correct and Ed pulls the plug, with all the enormous costs that would follow.

One thought I’m sure Ed will be pondering: principles that cost nothing aren’t terribly difficult principles to have.

I’ve watched him make enormous crowds on opposite sides of the planet feel as though they were spending the evening with a bloke and his guitar. The nice-guy image never felt particularly manufactured to me and let’s be fair Ed doesn’t have to tell us what to think about Gaza.

He does, however, have to decide who gets to tell him what can and can’t happen on his own stage.

But, that’s me, just Thinking Out Loud

Two months ago, Harry and Meghan were reunited in secret with the King and Queen at Highgrove. Then came the move back to Britain, a new school for Archie and Lilibet and a fresh review of their security. Now, after just two days in the classroom, not even time to resharpen pencils, the children are moving schools.

Here’s what we know.

Back in July, the idea of Harry and Meghan bringing their children back to live in Britain still seemed pretty remote. Then came Highgrove - the cloak and dagger visit that went ahead despite the better judgement of the Prince of Wales!

On 10th July, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex took Archie and Lilibet to the King’s Gloucestershire home for a private family reunion. They were smuggled in during a separate event planned at the house which attracted a steady stream of luxury vehicles, blacked-out cars and attendees throughout the day. It provided the security cover Harry and Meghan needed to slip through the gates undetected. Their vehicle blended in with the event traffic, allowing them, along with Archie and Lilibet, to enter the estate for their private hour-long meeting with King Charles and Queen Camilla without alerting photographers or the public.

The children, now seven and five, had not seen their grandfather in person for four years. Queen Camilla was also there. The woman Harry had been so very disparaging about in his book Spare. There were no photographs.

Harry had repeatedly made clear that he wanted a reconciliation with his father and wanted his children to know their British family. Highgrove suggested that, privately at least, something was beginning to shift.

By the end of August, Harry and Meghan had returned to Britain via a private jet arriving at Birmingham Airport, closer to the Cotswolds than LHR, with Archie and Lilibet. This wasn’t another flying visit by Harry for a court case, charity appearance or awards ceremony. The children were going to school here.

That mattered.

For all the briefings and counter-briefings surrounding the Sussexes over the years, enrolling two young children in a British school is a rather more concrete statement of intent. I remember my son’s first day at prep school - stressful for all involved, let’s be honest.

Last week, reports duly appeared of Archie and Lilibet beginning the new school year. Harry and Meghan were said to be happy to be back, with the children finally able to experience the British side of their heritage.

The Sussexes quickly settled into Cotswolds life - Harry and Meghan have both been seen separately at swanky Soho Farmhouse, one politely asking for a towel, the other being swept to a quieter spot for coffee in the main barn.

This weekend Meghan posted a video on her Instagram which showed the family walking in the countryside, Harry fishing with the children and later Lilibet warming her tootsies next to an open fire. Seems a bit early in the year for that - but you get the picture.

One problem though: photographers were able to geolocate where the Sussexes were by cross-referencing aerial photographs of the area. As locals we know already, but we aren’t telling.

However, it raises one of the issues that troubles Harry most… security.

When Harry and Meghan stepped back as working royals in 2020, they lost the automatic police protection they had previously received. Harry fought that decision through the courts and has spoken repeatedly about not feeling able to bring his family to Britain safely without adequate protection.

Now that the family is living here again, the question has returned with some force.

On Monday came news that the committee responsible for assessing protection arrangements, Ravec, had decided Harry’s circumstances should undergo a fresh review following the family’s return. Meghan is also to receive a separate assessment, her first since the couple left royal duties six years ago.

Harry spent the day on a secret project at Tower Bridge Studios

Nothing about that means taxpayer-funded police protection has been restored. A review is precisely that: an assessment of risk and circumstances.

Why then have the children been removed from their school after just two days?

A spokesman for Harry and Meghan confirmed that the decision followed discussions with the family’s security team about what were described as the “practicalities” of the arrangements: aka traffic on the school run.

Make no mistake, while much of the Cotswolds is chocolate box, we do have working towns where locals go to the weekly markets, the bank, the post office, the supermarket with its 10% discount on Tuesdays for OAPs - and all of that means traffic.

The issue, according to reports, was not the school itself but the journey to it: the distance from the family’s home, traffic and the difficulty of providing adequate security during the school run.

If true, surely none of this could have been a surprise to the security team?

That question was all over my X feed this morning.

One reader asked why the location of the house and school, together with the traffic, hadn’t been factored in beforehand.

Another was rather more sympathetic: “Wouldn’t it be amazing if every single decision people made went perfectly. We’re humans!”

Someone else asked simply: “How is it possible to come to this conclusion and then make the decision so quickly?”

In any event, the Sussexes have been at pains to praise the school they were leaving, saying they remained extremely grateful to the teachers and staff and stressing that the decision should not be interpreted as criticism of the care the children received.

Archie and Lilibet are now starting at another school and perhaps that is all there is to it. A plan that looked workable in July or August turned out not to be workable on a weekday morning in September.

Any local who has ever watched a satnav confidently predict a 25-minute journey before discovering there are roadworks in Moreton, Stow or Chippy, then attempting a detour only to get stuck behind a giant farm vehicle, may have some sympathy.

The timing, though, means the story cannot be separated entirely from the bigger question.

Within a matter of weeks, we have gone from a private reunion at Highgrove to Harry and Meghan returning to Britain with their children; Archie and Lilibet beginning British school life; Harry and Meghan’s security arrangements being reassessed; and now those same children changing schools after just two days because of security concerns surrounding the journey.

None of that proves either a grand plan or incompetence.

All I’m asking is: is it not rather an extraordinary sequence of events we have watched unfold?

My thoughts are with two little ’uns: Archie and Lilibet.

New country, new home, new school and after just two days, another new school.

Whatever anyone thinks about their parents, we can see from Meghan’s Instagram and various other media outlets how much she and Harry love those kids. A stress-free Cotswolds life has eluded them, up to now at least.

I hope for all of them that the next chapter is considerably less eventful

.

I travelled through Gander on my way to Fogo Island and found that Newfoundland’s instinct for hospitality extends far beyond one extraordinary week.

There are places whose names become permanently attached to tragedy.

New York. Washington. A field in Pennsylvania.

And then there is Gander.

Twenty-five years ago, as the horror of September 11 unfolded and American airspace was closed, 38 aircraft were diverted to this small town in Newfoundland. On board were more than 6,500 passengers and crew who had set off for somewhere else and suddenly found themselves stranded on the edge of eastern Canada.

Gander had a population of around 10,000. Within hours, it had been asked to look after thousands of frightened strangers from across the world and the people who lived there did not hesitate.

Schools, churches and community halls became dormitories. Residents brought blankets, clothes, food and toiletries. They opened their homes and offered showers, spare bedrooms and transport. Pharmacists filled prescriptions. Extra telephone lines were installed so passengers could contact their families and even the animals travelling in aircraft holds were sought out, fed and cared for.

Some of those who arrived knew very little about what had happened in America. They had spent hours sitting on grounded aircraft, confused and frightened, before finally being allowed to disembark.

The passengers became known locally as the “plane people”. Newfoundlanders have their own term for visitors: “come from aways”.

The phrase may ring a bell.

The story eventually inspired the musical Come From Away, which I have seen and loved. I would heartily recommend it not least because it manages something that should be almost impossible. It tells a story born out of 9/11 that is uplifting without ever losing sight of the terrible events that caused it.

Years later, I passed through the town on my way to one of the most extraordinary places I have ever visited.

Fogo Island.

The journey to what seems like the end of the earth is daunting. It takes planning, resilience and stamina. Certainly not for the faint-hearted, my trek involved three flights, two road trips and a ferry journey through pack ice.

By the time I reached the ferry, the sea itself appeared to be freezing over. We pushed through the ice towards a remote fishing community off the north-eastern coast of Newfoundland.

According to one wonderfully eccentric version of the Flat Earth theory, Fogo is one of the four corners of the world. For completeness, the other three are Hydra, Papua New Guinea and the Bermuda Triangle!

Standing there, with the Atlantic stretching beyond a bleak granite shoreline and the weather seemingly arriving directly from the Arctic, the claim does not feel entirely ridiculous.

You have to really want to travel to Fogo Island, but when you finally reach it, you may never want to leave. Ever.

Smaller than the Isle of Wight, at around 100 square miles, and with a population of little more than 2,000, Fogo was, until relatively recently, a community on its knees.

For generations its life had revolved around cod. English and Irish settlers arrived around 300 years ago, building a community that survived at the mercy of the sea.

Then decades of overfishing helped devastate the cod stocks, culminating in the 1992 moratorium. Work disappeared and young islanders began leaving in droves. Tourists had little to draw them to the hostile conditions of this bleak granite rock.

The future for Fogo looked dire. Step forward Zita Cobb.

The daughter of a local fisherman who struggled to feed his family, Zita left Fogo to study on the mainland and went on to make a fortune in fibre optics. She could have spent the rest of her life almost anywhere.

Instead, she came home.

Her idea for helping revive the island was audacious: build a luxury hotel on the most barren headland. Locals thought she was mad and looking at the place she chose to build it, you can understand why.

But Zita’s “build it and they will come” mentality worked.

The 29-room Fogo Island Inn opened in 2013 and went on to become one of the world’s most celebrated remote hotels. Her vision though was never simply to parachute luxury into a struggling community.

The inn created jobs directly, but its influence reaches much further. Furniture and quilts are made locally. Fishermen, guides, craftspeople, cooks and community hosts form part of the experience.

The hotel does not merely sit on a rocky outcrop of Fogo Island. It belongs to it.

My introduction to the island came courtesy of Roy Dwyer. Roy is a man of the sea. A fisherman, published author and poet who had spent much of his life at the mercy of the Atlantic.

As he drove me along the snowy trails, pointing out the old fishing stages where catches were once salted to last through winter, he recited poems he had composed while waiting for cod to bite.

There’s work too for younger Fogo islanders and not just within the hotel. Those who understand the idiosyncrasies of the landscape and the unpredictability of the weather are invaluable to visitors.

Another islander, PJ, took me snowmobiling across a frozen lake - an activity he found considerably less alarming than I did.

To reassure me about the thickness of the ice, he drilled a deep fishing hole through it, handed me some twine attached to a twig, with a piece of cheese on the end, and invited me to catch a trout.

I was unsuccessful in my quest.

Afterwards, we snowshoed along the tree-line to a log cabin for a very welcome cup of tea before heading back outside for a Newfoundland “boil up”, essentially a barbecue conducted in conditions that would persuade most British people to call the whole thing off and go to the pub.

I returned to the hotel with a greater appreciation of the outdoors.

It snowed heavily overnight, providing more than enough of the fluffy stuff for Arctic explorer and mountaineer TA Loeffler to teach me how to build a quinzhee, a shelter made from a mound of snow.

Think posh igloo.

It requires quite a lot of brute force and, in my case, even more ignorance. My attempt wouldn’t have won any prizes but at least it didn’t collapse.

Eventually, in need of some serious thawing out, I retreated to the inn, found two enormous Newfoundland dogs called Make and Break and enjoyed a restorative cuddle before climbing into the rooftop hot tub.

Sitting in steaming water beneath a vast, dark sky, I thought about what Zita Cobb had achieved.

One woman had returned to the island of her childhood and helped give it a future, not by trying to turn it into somewhere else, but by showing the rest of the world what was already there.

And she hasn’t stopped. Cobb remains closely involved through Shorefast, the organisation behind the Inn and its wider work on Fogo.

Looking back, it seems fitting that the journey to Fogo took me through Gander.

The two places are linked by more than geography. Both understand what it means to live somewhere remote, where survival has always depended upon neighbours helping neighbours and where strangers are welcomed.

On September 11, 2001, the people of Gander were confronted with an almost impossible challenge. Thousands of unexpected visitors arrived carrying confusion and fear. The town responded with food, shelter and friendship.

The world remembers 9/11 for the evil committed that day, and it should, but 25 years later, it is worth remembering something else too.

What happened when the planes landed in Newfoundland.

At the end of one of the darkest days in modern history, thousands of strangers found themselves at the edge of the world and discovered kindness.

The RNLI says Portsmouth Lifeboat Station has been taken off service following an incident on 6th September involving hostility towards its volunteers. Jacqui Irons, the RNLI’s head of the south-east region, said the decision was made to review crew safety and wellbeing and support those involved.

Cover is being provided by nearby stations for now.

How on earth did we get to a place where volunteers who risk their own lives to save others are now fearful for their own safety?

This is the climate in which would-be London mayor Ant Middleton chose to tell his followers: “we must now stop funding them. Cut off the funds, cut off the capability.”

His argument is that cutting off the RNLI’s funding would stop its ability to rescue migrants in the Channel. Since then, RNLI volunteers have been singled out, abused and branded “traitors”.

Let me tell you about my experience with the RNLI.

When I was a little girl, Mum and Dad would take my sister and I to Pontin’s at Squires Gate in Blackpool for our holidays. Money was tight and foreign holidays were certainly not part of our lives, but Blackpool was exciting enough for me and I absolutely loved it. The illuminations, the Tower, the trams, the Pleasure Beach and, on one of our outings in particular which involved going to see the lifeboat on the sea front.

This was the 60s and 70s and I remember the boat - the Maria Noble, I think she was called - and the feeling of excitement at being allowed to get close to something that looked so big and important, but I had no real understanding of what it was there to do, or what might be asked of the volunteers who crewed the all-weather boat.

That came many years later.

In December 1981, I was celebrating my 21st birthday with friends at home in Wigan when news began to filter through to us that there had been a disaster off the Cornish coast. It was a Saturday night and, with a house full of journalists, we were of course immediately curious.

This was long before rolling news, mobile phones or social media so there was no news channel to switch on and watch the story unfold, no live blog to refresh, no phone vibrating every few seconds with another development. We knew a lifeboat was missing and we knew the weather was atrocious.

As the evening wore on, the terrible scale of what had happened began to emerge as we listened to updates at the top of the hour on the radio.

The Solomon Browne, the Penlee lifeboat based at Mousehole in Cornwall, had launched to help the Union Star, a cargo vessel which had lost power off Land’s End. There were eight men aboard the lifeboat. All of them brave, selfless volunteers.

The news readers described almost unimaginable conditions. Hurricane-force winds, mountainous seas and a lifeless ship being driven towards the rocks. A Royal Navy Sea King helicopter had already tried to rescue those aboard the Union Star but had been unable to get them off.

So in the almost total darkness of an angry sea the Solomon Browne was launched.

Reading again about the attempted rescue for this article, I reminded myself that the crew managed to get alongside the stricken vessel and take four people off. Four lives saved in near on impossible conditions.

There were still people aboard the Union Star, though, so the lifeboat went back for them.

It never came home. A crew who just a few hours earlier had been enjoying a Saturday night with their friends and family. Perhaps having supper; at the pub; playing sport or maybe even celebrating a birthday, as I was when the shout came for help.

All eight lifeboatmen died, along with the eight people who had been aboard the Union Star. Sixteen lives were lost.

I have never forgotten that night, maybe because it was happening while I was celebrating such a milestone in my own life. Perhaps because I was already a young journalist and instinctively wanted to know what had happened.

Solomon Browne being launched on an earlier shout

But mostly, I think, because it was the first time I properly understood what that lifeboat Mum and Dad had taken me to see in Blackpool represented. Brave men (and now women) who risk their own lives to help others.

These were ordinary men with families and homes who had gone out on a dreadful December night a few days before Christmas because complete strangers were in danger at sea. They didn’t know the people they were trying to rescue and didn’t ask whether they had made a bad decision that had put them in danger.

Just over a year later, another tragedy happened in Blackpool, a place I knew so well from those childhood holidays.

In January 1983, a man was swept into the sea trying to rescue his dog and police officers responded. The conditions were dreadful - the freezing temperatures of the Irish Sea doing their worst - but that didn’t stop them jumping into the water to try to save a man and his dog.

Three of them, PCs Gordon Connolly, Colin Morrison and Angela Bradley, drowned. The man they were trying to rescue died too.

It wasn’t an RNLI rescue, but there is a remarkable connection.

One of the police officers who went into the water that day and survived was PC Pat Abram. The experience stayed with him and he later became a volunteer with Blackpool RNLI.

There is a particular instinct among people who run towards danger while the rest of us would quite sensibly run away from it. Firefighters do it; police officers do it; soldiers do it. And lifeboat crews do it.

Which brings us to 2026 and the RNLI being dragged into one of the most poisonous political arguments in Britain.

Just to be clear, Ant Middleton is advocating: Defund the lifeboats, and after asking my followers on X, it seems he’s not alone. Here are just a few replies:

X comments. More including support for the RNLI at the end of the piece

Now, I do understand the anger about small boats. In fact, I share much of it.

The numbers are far too high with criminal gangs making fortunes by putting people into dangerously overcrowded and increasingly large dinghies.

The public is entitled to be angry that UK governments of different colours have promised to stop the crossings and have repeatedly failed to do so.

We are entitled to demand secure borders with an immigration and asylum system that works effectively. Saying so does not make anyone racist, heartless or far-right, and pretending that every concern about immigration is illegitimate has helped create the political mess we are now in.

I’ve written about small boats before and I will again.

BBC

But there is an enormous difference between demanding that politicians stop people setting off across the Channel and demanding that rescuers stop saving them once they are in danger.

Let’s be crystal clear people, the RNLI doesn’t set immigration policy. It doesn’t decide who gets a visa, who is entitled to asylum or who should be returned to another country. It doesn’t negotiate with France and it doesn’t prosecute people smugglers.

Most importantly, it doesn’t decide which human beings are worthy of being pulled from the sea. When HM Coastguard asks the RNLI to respond to an incident, its volunteers respond.

That is what happened again off Portsmouth on Sunday, when their lifeboats were involved in bringing people ashore from a small boat in the Channel.

You can dislike the fact that those people were attempting to reach Britain and can believe they should never have been able to leave the French coast in the first place, but those frustrations should be directed at politicians.

The overriding question for a lifeboat crew approaching an overcrowded vessel in the Channel is and should always be: Are these people in danger?

If they are, you save them. End of. Surely?

There is another major problem with Ant Middleton turning the RNLI into a target in the migration debate. Lifeboats exist to save anyone who finds themselves in difficulty in the water.

The person who needs help tomorrow might be a fisherman whose boat has capsized, a child swept out on an inflatable or paddle board, a sailor in trouble or a family whose pleasure boat has lost power.

Let’s be completely honest here, it could be you; it could be me; it could be our family or friends. Imagine just for a second the absolute terror of seeing a loved one taken by the tide, calling desperately for help and being told: Sorry, that bloke who fancies himself as London mayor - even though he presently lives in Dubai, oh and and also has a criminal conviction - campaigned to get rid of the help you need. Soz, mate.

The sea doesn’t care about our politics, nor does it distinguish between somebody who has made a sensible decision and somebody who has made an idiotic one. If making a bad decision disqualified us from being rescued, emergency services would have rather less to do on a Saturday night.

The RNLI has spent more than 200 years saving lives at sea. Its crews are overwhelmingly volunteers, people who are prepared to leave dinner on the table, climb out of bed in the middle of the night, leave Christmas gifts unopened under the tree because a pager has gone off.

There is something particularly uncomfortable about sitting safely on land and deciding that a lifeboat should remain tied up because we disapprove of the person who might need rescuing. Where does that principle end?

Do we ask whether the yachtsman ignored the weather forecast or whether the swimmer went into the water despite a red flag? Whether somebody on a cliff ignored the warning sign or the fisherman in trouble because he should have known better?

None of this means accepting uncontrolled migration or that every person who crosses the Channel is entitled to remain in Britain.

‘How do we stop people crossing the Channel illegally’ and ‘what do we do when somebody is in danger of drowning’ are two completely separate questions. One is for politicians to sort out, the other for people braver than I to answer.

I keep coming back to those childhood trips to Blackpool and the lifeboat Mum and Dad took me to see.

I think of Penlee and those eight volunteers heading out into a December storm while I was at home celebrating my 21st birthday.

I think of Gordon Connolly, Colin Morrison and Angela Bradley going into the sea at Blackpool to try to save a tourist who lost his life trying to save his dog. The dog also died.

And I think of Pat Abram surviving that terrible experience and later choosing to remember his drowned colleagues by volunteering for the RNLI himself.

Every year on 19th December, the Christmas lights in Mousehole are dimmed in memory of the crew of the Solomon Browne.

We can argue about borders and “invaders” - the inflammatory word Reform chooses to use to describe those people on boats in the middle of the sea.

We can argue about the role France is playing in all of this or the smugglers and absolutely we should argue about those things.

But once somebody is in danger at sea, there is nothing left to argue about. The RNLI saves lives. That’s the whole point.

Some agree, others don’t, what about you?

It was August, 2022 and the team were 18 floors up at the Ritz-Carlton in Miami Beach when we began discussing what we would do if Jared Kushner decided he’d had enough of me.

Donald Trump’s son-in-law was in the middle of a whirlwind publicity tour for his memoir, Breaking History. He was giving interviews largely to right-wing media outlets but the brilliant Sky News booker, Cleudi had managed to secure a UK exclusive.

There had, however, been something of a misunderstanding. Someone on Jared Kushner’s team appeared to have assumed that Sky News was essentially the same brand in different hemispheres.

It isn’t.

Sky News Australia has a distinctly different editorial outlook from the one in Britain, something that became increasingly apparent as the interview progressed.

By the time it became clear that this wasn’t quite the interview his team had anticipated, we were in a swanky hotel suite - bigger than my flat - overlooking expansive Miami Beach and the cameras were already rolling.

The team and I had discussed the possibility that, once the questioning moved beyond the comfortable territory of a book promotion, Jared might decide he’d had enough. So, a lightweight, hand-held camera was positioned nonchalantly on the back of a sofa, but by the door so that if he did get up and leave, we wouldn’t lose him. The plan was that the cameraman and I would follow him out of the room and into the lift, carrying on with the questions during the 18 storey journey down to the lobby and, if necessary, all the way to his waiting car.

Would we need to activate Operation Grump when I started to ask about Donald Trump’s claims the 2020 election was stolen; the violence of the January 6 riots and the FBI raid on Mar-a-Lago?

We were about to find out…

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You must have assumed you would be eating cake surrounded by friends, family and colleagues around the Cabinet Room table at No 10. Maybe a series of public events where a cake had been created especially for you and you had to pretend it was the only one you’d received that day. A Prime Minister with a thumping Commons majority and many birthdays ahead of you in Downing Street.

Instead, you woke up this morning not only no longer Prime Minister, but no longer an MP.

Yesterday, after 11 years representing Holborn and St Pancras, you announced you were leaving Parliament, not at the next general election as you had previously promised, but now. Only you know why you chose yesterday rather than today, although the timing was certainly interesting given that your successor, Andy Burnham, was preparing for his first big appearance in the Commons as Prime Minister and setting out how he intends to run the country differently.

Was that part of the calculation, a desire to clear the stage, or was there another reason for going when you did?

Perhaps one day you’ll tell us. In a book. For a lot of money.

Either way, birthdays have a habit of making us take stock and, at 64, you can look back on something very few people achieve: you rose to the top twice.

First in the law, becoming Director of Public Prosecutions, and then in politics, as Labour leader and taking a party that had been crushed in 2019 to a landslide general election victory just five years later. To say I was lost for words sitting next to Andy Burnham in the Sky News Election Night studio would be an understatement.

Even then, I always thought one of your problems in politics was that you needed to toughen up.

I know that sounds odd when talking to a man who prosecuted criminals for a living and went on to run the country, but politics is brutal. Westminster can smell weakness from across Parliament Square and, once it does, there isn’t much mercy.

I started work in newsrooms in the 1970s and they weren’t places where anyone worried terribly much about your feelings. If you weren’t good enough, someone told you, usually loudly and sometimes in front of everybody else, so you toughened up pretty quickly.

You also learned that being good at your job wasn’t necessarily enough.

When I started broadcasting, I knew my diction and delivery needed work, so I would sit at home reading Teletext out loud into a ghetto blaster, recording myself, playing it back, wincing at what I sounded like with my strong Wigan accent and then starting again. And again.

With his mum and dad on Graduation Day

Communication is a skill and it really can be learned, which for me was one of the great frustrations of your premiership. You were clearly clever enough to do the job, you were serious and you worked hard, but you never quite mastered the deceptively simple business of telling the country what you were doing and, more crucially, why.

Being right isn’t enough, producing the evidence isn’t enough and even getting the policy right isn’t enough if voters don’t understand what you are trying to say.

There were resets and relaunches, slogans that came and went, and difficult decisions that were allowed to sit there while your opponents explained to voters what they supposedly said about you.

And yet abroad we often saw a rather different Keir Starmer, one who looked more comfortable and more assured on the international stage. Ukraine in particular played to your strengths: serious, measured and determined, standing alongside presidents and prime ministers and looking as though you belonged there.

Even that awkward exchange in the Oval Office when you produced a letter from the king like some sort of political magician.

New York Times

Whatever the domestic difficulties, Britain had a Prime Minister who could operate comfortably among world leaders, and we saw you had courage too.

When your own home was targeted, in attacks prosecutors linked to Russian interests, you remained extraordinarily calm. Most of us can only imagine what it feels like when political hatred arrives at your front door, but you appeared calm, quite literally, under fire.

Arson attack at the Starmer family home

You coped with danger and responsibility while raising a teenage family with Lady Victoria and still made difficult decisions, but what you struggled to do was persuade enough people that you understood how those decisions felt in their lives.

There will be plenty of time for the political autopsy, but, ok, while I have you: the winter fuel row, the U-turns, the internal battles and the extraordinary speed with which that enormous 2024 majority no longer felt like political security.

And how could you not have seen Andy Burnham coming, and with the speed and surprise of a Marvel character?

Then yesterday you provided your critics with one final U-turn. Having said you wouldn’t step down as an MP, why choose to quit on the eve of your birthday rather than today, next week or, as you had promised, at the next general election? Only you know, and whether the timing had anything to do with your successor is another question perhaps you’ll answer in that memoir.

Your departure does at least mean another by-election this time in Holborn and St Pancras and, inevitably, the return of Count Binface, whose response on X to the news yesterday was: “Can’t get a moment’s peace on this bloody planet.”

Whatever anyone thinks of your premiership, getting to the top of one profession is difficult enough. You did it twice, and I suspect more people are sorry you’ve gone than you might imagine, politics is cruel like that; sometimes we see people more clearly once they’re walking away.

Or not.

So, with a cap tip to The Beatles, the question on your birthday has to be: Did we still need you, now you’re 64?

Turns out, Sir Keir, we didn’t.

Diana was just 36 when she was involved in the fatal car crash in a Paris underpass. Her boys William then 15, Harry only 12. Whatever else Diana had become by that stage: celebrity, campaigner, global icon, arguably the most photographed woman in the world - she was also the mother of two young boys and suddenly, she was gone.

I was working for Sky News at the time and, like journalists across the world, became part of the coverage of an event none of us could initially comprehend.

I’ve written in much greater detail about those extraordinary days for a project I’m working on and will share more in the fullness of time, but almost three decades later, what stays with me is not only the enormity of the news but also the public reaction on 31st August 1997.

Britain seemed to be frozen in grief.

Mourners travelled to London in their thousands, then their tens of thousands. Flowers spread outside the royal palaces where complete strangers cried together. They felt they had lost someone they knew personally. It’s easy, with the benefit of 29 years’ distance, to forget just how extraordinary that was.

There was anger too, at the press, at the Royal Family, at the apparent reluctance of the Palace to respond the way many people wanted, and arguments about flags and protocol became symbols of something much bigger.

Diana had an extraordinary ability to connect with people. She hugged people with AIDS at a time when fear and ignorance about the disease were widespread, and she walked through an Angolan minefield to draw attention to the devastation caused by landmines. The People’s Princess - as then PM Tony Blair called her - seemed to understood instinctively the power of a touch and making somebody feel seen. There was always a photographer, sometimes invited, other times unwanted, to capture every moment of Diana’s turbulent life.

Of course, she was complicated too because real people always are.

Could that be partly why the fascination with her has endured? She wasn’t a remote figure from history. She was glamorous and vulnerable, privileged and deeply unhappy - even trying to take her own life when she was pregnant with William, by her own account.

She was capable of commanding a room while convincing the person in front of her that they were the only one who mattered.

Her boys have adopted their mother’s talents, Harry in particular has his mother’s human skills. The photograph of him walking in his mother’s footsteps through an Angolan minefield is cited by many.

In a couple of weeks Harry will likely be attending the glitzy Diana Award event at the luxurious Raffles Hotel in central London just a stone’s throw from Buckingham Palace. The award celebrates young people who make a difference to the lives of others.

Royal watchers speculate whether Meghan will be by his side? William will certainly not be.

That is a conversation for another day.

On this the anniversary of Diana’s death, there will inevitably be photographs, documentaries and recollections of that extraordinary week in the late summer of 1997. For me, though, the most enduring images will always be of her broken sons, eyes to the floor, walking behind their mother’s coffin as it made its way to Westminster Abbey.

They are now both older than their mother ever lived to be.

Although twenty-nine years have passed Diana is still only 36.