Salut!

Leveson and me: rights and wrongs of an important report

Yes, I shall address the Leveson report here. My intention is to attack the sanctimonious and hypocritical TV coverage and some of Lord Justice Leveson's assumptions and conclusions, but also to give a warmer - though still critical - response than you might expect to his key recommendations. But first and foremost, I am a reporter. This, for now, is how I must leave it - my report in today's edition of The National, Abu Dhabi

The comma that sealed Sir Roger Casement's fate

Image: Andrew Bennett

Killing time on Twitter, I came across a mild objection to commas lodged by @Jennyheppy: 'Ignore the comma, I hate the comma.' My first response was to adapt an old example and tweet:' "My husband doesn't understand me" is not the same as "my husband doesn't, understand me?" '. Then I remembered the case of Sir Roger Casement, my knowledge of which impressed Jenny until I confessed to being an anorak. This was a 'My Word' column from The National, Abu Dhabi, published in Oct 2009 ...

Valérie Trierweiler: the eloquence of anger, from Angers to the Elysée

You can't 'look inside'. But see footnote

The return to London for hibernation has coincided with a busy burst of professional activity. Little time, therefore, to do more than draw Salut! readers' attention to my work elsewhere. This look at the explosive presence of President François Hollande's partner Valérie Trierweiler on the French political landscape has just appeared on the website of The National, Abu Dhabi ...

Slaughter in the Alps: planned execution or the work of a psychopath?

Image: Davers .. so beautiful a location for so ugly a crime

I have written about the murders in the French Alps in September for The National, Abu Dhabi* and The Daily Telegraph. A common assumption throughout the inquiry to date has been that the motive for the killings lies outside France. That may well prove the case but, as I reported when trying to update this tragic story for The National, investigators have also been paying attention to the possibility of a random act by a deranged individual. Since publication of Le Monde's report, mentioned below in the context of a possible Iraqi link, gendarmes and prosecutors have insisted that no such information has been passed from German intelligence to their French counterparts ...