As I fly into Tbilisi, memories flood back from my first visit to Georgia in 2005. I remember the infectious energy of President Mikhail Saakashvili and his fellow Rose Revolutionaries who had overthrown the government of Eduard Shevardnadze. It felt as if Ocean's Eleven had been given custody of the republic; a cabal of beautiful young people dashing around changing the country from top to bottom. In his first few [...]

Defending in a case at Woolwich Crown Court in south-east London. Most trials alleging terrorism are now listed here rather than the Old Bailey because the court is alongside Belmarsh Prison and prisoners can be brought to court through a linked tunnel. This avoids all the usual security arrangements of helicopters, outriders and the total disruption of the City of London at rush hour. Or so the story goes (though [...]

Back from a weekend in Paris, I wonder for the hundredth time why I don't live there. It is a curiously shocking experience arriving in the city via Eurostar. If you fly to Paris, you pass through airports that muffle the senses. Travelling directly by train in two and a half hours from city centre to city centre, you have a feeling of having moved suddenly between two very different [...]

On my way to take part in a public conversation with Shami Chakrabarti, director of Liberty, I cross the serene courtyard of the British Library in north London. Its broad, cool spaces induce just the mood of calm contemplation that books demand. I enter the hallowed portals and, handing over my bag for inspection, I hear all hell break loose. At the top of the stairs, a live band is [...]

I’m writing this diary for sentimental reasons. Both my father, Paul Johnson, and my godfather, Tony Howard, were editors of the New Statesman when I was young. So I feel a curious attachment to the magazine, even though I'm bound to disagree with most of its contents.

On Monday evening I go to my cousin Crispin's house for supper. It was a particularly upsetting meal, because I realised that [...]

One of the curses of having written a book about Peter Mandelson is being left with an over-detailed recall of his colourful career. I checked my memory when it emerged that Tony Blair had been prompted by a meeting with Bernie Ecclestone to tell ministers to row back on their efforts to ban tobacco advertising in Formula One. Sure enough, I wrote that Mandelson had directed his adviser and briefer [...]

At 6.30am there's a bit of excitement in the green room at BBC TV's Breakfast. Roger Moore and Michael Parkinson are there - "Two knights in one morning!" - but I manage to avoid the elaborate dance of the croissants and go straight into make-up. There's no getting away from the pastries, however. My eyes are like two currants in a round of dough, and everyone else in the studio [...]

Of my four old diplomatic stamping grounds - France, America, Russia and China - the last two were dead countries that have since sprung to life. The wittiest remark on Soviet Russia was by Louis-Ferdinand Céline after a visit in the Thirties: "une catastrophe qui végète". There is no outward sign of mouldering now, or (except from some overstretched oligarchs) of catastrophe.

"Engagement" has always been the recommended foreign policy [...]

It’s about 9.30 in the morning as I write this. One child is off sick, seemingly with tonsillitis, another is off school for Rosh Hashana, and I will deliver him to his father later today. The three dogs have not been walked, but our cleaning lady fed them. Rosh Hashana child has forgotten his homework at school. He later confesses that his tearful plea not to be sent to school [...]

Ministerial reshuffles seldom, if ever, change anything. In fact, the only one I can recall that did (and then substantially for the worse) was "the Macmillan massacre" of July 1962. That was the occasion when Supermac lopped off the heads of a third of his cabinet (including that of his chancellor, Selwyn Lloyd) at a single stroke. All this act of carnage achieved was to leave him defenceless in the [...]