Peter Rhodes on a prince's book, early eggs and a bizarre tale of Mr Adams and the bombers
Peter Rhodes on a prince's book, early eggs and a bizarre tale of Mr Adams and the bombers
The assorted hand-gluers, gantry climbers and white-van-man botherers collectively known as Extinction Rebellion (XR) have let it be known they are calling a halt to “disruptive” protests. So who are we going to hate now?
Headlines that repeat. According to reports guaranteed to get us all harrumphing, the moment the New Year arrived some shops began selling Easter eggs. But was there ever a year when they didn't?
My recent piece on our first power cut of the winter at Chateau Rhodes overlooked one exceedingly useful bit of kit. It is a rechargeable, motion-activated LED strip made in China and selling for less than a tenner. You stick it in some dark corner of your house where it becomes live as darkness falls and switches its lights on if anyone passes. Clearly, it must be part of some fiendish Chinese plot to destabilise the West but I haven't figured out how.
Papers just released by the National Archives of Ireland recall that Gerry Adams, leader of Sinn Fein in 1996, claimed he had no advance knowledge of that year's IRA bombing of London's Docklands and “was glad he did not know.” This rings a bell.
I interviewed Adams over a long lunch a few weeks after the bombing. In my report I described his claimed ignorance of the atrocity as bizarre. And yet there was nothing in his body language, not even a sly smile, to suggest he was deceiving. As Adams put it: “ 'The IRA are going to plant this huge bomb in Canary Wharf and they're going to call me up or send for me and tell me before? That's ridiculous." Yet not informing Adams was the equivalent of the RAF deciding to carpet-bomb Berlin without consulting Churchill. Bizarre, indeed, but then the entire IRA bombing campaign was pretty bizarre, not to say brainless.
As Prince Harry's publication date approaches, we are told by unnamed Palace sources that while brother William and Princess Kate can expect a drubbing in his book, entitled Spare, Harry will give his father, King Charles, an easier ride.
Strangely, there is little mention so far of the person at the heart of the Windsor's grim saga of betrayal, deception and broken promises. I can't believe Harry doesn't have some choice views on Camilla.
