en-uk Tue, 30 Oct 2007 15:37:29 GMT Copyright 2007 Times Newspapers Ltd. custserv@timesonline.co.uk http://www.timesonline.co.uk Wed, 25 Nov 2009 04:19:43 GMT Newspapers 144 21 http://www.timesonline.co.uk http://images.thetimes.co.uk/TGD/picture/0,,116979,00.gif Matthew Parris Sat, 21 Nov 2009 00:01:00 GMT 2009-11-20T07:50:30Z At Sunday school we were taught to say our prayers. Miss Silk told us to compile a list of things we hoped God might do for the world. Matthew Parris Thu, 19 Nov 2009 00:01:00 GMT 2009-11-18T07:23:48Z Do you ever watch an aeroplane flying seemingly rather low along the horizon, and shock yourself by a little voice in your head that says: “Crash! Crash!”? Have you listened to yourself talking to an audience — and heard that same interior devil whispering: “Fluff your next line! Go blank! Go blank!”? Matthew Parris Sat, 14 Nov 2009 00:01:00 GMT 2009-11-19T11:40:43Z Dear Sir. Dear Madam. Dear me. Matthew Parris Thu, 12 Nov 2009 00:01:00 GMT 2009-11-18T06:28:39Z I worked for Margaret Thatcher for the two years before 1979 as her correspondence clerk. She was always very particular about replying in her own hand to people in serious distress. Like Gordon Brown, she worked late, making the day fit her work rather than the other way round; and it was never too much for her to spend half an hour more in the small hours on a pile of letters of comfort or consolation — letters she was unexpectedly good at penning, the warmth she often seemed to lack emerging in her emphatic, blue-felt-tip hand — with lots of underlining. Matthew Parris Sat, 07 Nov 2009 00:01:00 GMT 2009-11-12T02:31:44Z Two big anxieties hang like dark clouds over the voters’ minds this November. Neither has anything to do with party politics. One is Afghanistan, the other the collapse of confidence in Parliament. The first, the Afghan war, is raw, ominous and impossible to ignore. Events this week give it a cruel new urgency.