#jonathan dimbleby

"I Pity the King on US State Visit"-David Dimbleby

"Buckingham Palace has confirmed King Charles and Queen Camilla will meet US President Donald Trump in a state visit to the United States in late April. Speaking to Radio 4’s PM, BBC Royal Occasion presenter David Dimbleby said the planned visit is an “embarrassment” and it is not “an appropriate time to go”. The veteran broadcaster also said he has “pity” for the King because “he’s at mercy of the government”. "

Queen Elizabeth's Address to Congress

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彭定康（Chris Patten）英國末代港督，歐盟前外務委員，牛津大學校長 今年夏初，一位澳洲朋友打電話祝賀我成為「OBE」，我在困惑之餘問對方：「你到底是什麼意思？」，他回答：「我在報紙的生日專欄上注意到，你現在已經是個八十多歲的老傢伙了（Over Bloody Eighty）。」 他說得沒錯，我剛在5月12日過了80歲生日。出於對這一天歷史意義的好奇，我發現1944年的同一個周末，蘇聯軍隊迫使德軍從克里米亞撤軍，當時他們正逐步扭轉納粹在戰爭早期於俄羅斯和中歐地區取得的戰果。 幸運的是，這些事件正是我的好友丁伯白（Jonathan Dimbleby）最近出版《終局1944：史達林是如何贏得這場戰爭的》（Endgame 1944: How Stalin Won the…

Part 2 of my 2015 Election Wacky Races. Part 1 is here. This week, with Ed Millipede, amazingly, one point in the lead, the four front-runners take a pit stop and take part in Question Time. David Caravan Question Time with Jonathan Dimbleby this week is from King’s College Hospital London and we are discussing the way the NHS has changed under the present Conservative Government; in particular…

Jonathan Dimbleby has known the Prince of Wales since he coaxed a confession of adultery out of him three decades ago. Today he is an ardent supporter and staunch defender and has particularly robust views on the Duke of Sussex, whose rift with his father shows no sign of healing. After the Duke and Duchess of Sussex made a flying visit to see the Queen, Harry said that he was “making sure she’s protected and has got the right people around her.” Dimbleby is scathing of this in a way no palace courtier could dare to be in public. “So you’ve swanned in to check that the people who are very close to her are the right people?” he says, his voice dripping with sarcasm. “Thank you very much. I mean, your wisdom, Harry, is well worth it, I have no doubt. And now you’re zooming out again.”

Dimbleby says that the claims in the Sussexes’ interview with Oprah Winfrey, that a member of the royal family had “concerns” about how dark their baby’s skin might be, were unfair. The Sussexes made it clear through Winfrey that neither the Queen nor Prince Philip made the comment. “Who the hell was it supposed to be? That is the wickedness of it: it allows you to speculate. You rule out the Queen, you rule out the Duke of Edinburgh. So who would it be?” Dimbleby says. “And why do you make such a smear? I thought that interview was, to put it kindly, the most ghastly error of judgment on their part.” He is not privy to the details of the rift between Harry and his father, but Charles “would have been extremely frustrated and saddened and possibly angry at the thought that either he or Meghan would believe that he in any way had a racist attitude. “I know the man. I have known him for 30 years. You go into the streets of any inner city in this country with the Prince of Wales, the first people to greet him really warmly are young black people, because they have experienced the consequences of the work that has been done through the Prince’s Trust. So it is an unspeakable libel, actually.”

The former Any Questions presenter met Harry when he made his 1994 film about the Prince of Wales that included the famous interview. “I suspect that Harry is led by the nose by Meghan Markle. He’s entering a sort of vortex in which they will become less and less significant as a couple. As she gets older, as he gets older, they will matter less because the celebrity on which they trade will become less valuable. And it’s a very great shame because when I met him, he was absolutely charming; a lovely, lovely young guy. Not the brightest in the world but filled with generosity of spirit.” Is the Prince of Wales a friend? “Yes,” he says, then pauses to consider. “I am chary of the ‘friend’ label. But do I rate him highly and do I have affection for him? Very much so. I’m a monarchist by default. I think it’s a prison. I’d loath to live in it.” Dimbleby has fiercely defended Charles over allegations of a cash-for-honours scandal at the Prince’s Foundation. A Scotland Yard investigation is centred on the role of Michael Fawcett, his former valet, who quit as chief executive last year after claims that a Saudi billionaire who donated £1.5 million was promised help in securing a knighthood. Norman Baker, a former Liberal Democrat minister, said it was “inconceivable” that Charles was not aware of the arrangement. “I bet you that there will have to be an apology given for that inference. It is to me inconceivable that he did know about it. He’s at the apex of a system which relies on people going through proper processes,” he says. So does Charles sometimes have the wrong people around him? “Who’s to judge what is right, and what is wrong, except with the wonderful benefit of hindsight.” Their association began with Charles: The Private Man, the Public Role, filmed over two years and accompanied by a biography written by Dimbleby. The prince told him he was faithful in his marriage to the Princess of Wales “until it became irretrievably broken down”. That scoop, which is still constantly referenced three decades on, will almost certainly be mentioned in the first paragraph of his obituary. “That for me, if there is an afterlife, which I doubt, will be the most tiresome and boring fact.”

He found the business of asking about the prince’s private life distasteful. “I knew it was extremely sensitive territory. And I was absolutely torn. If I ask it, what would he say? And would I have to press the point? If I don’t ask, I’ll be attacked for wimping out. I frankly wished I didn’t have to do it. I never regarded that as a scoop. The only scoop that I believe I really had was to uncover a famine in 1973 in Ethiopia.”

The year after the prince programme, the Princess of Wales gave her own TV interview to Martin Bashir, whose lies to secure the interview were detailed in a report by Lord Dyson last year that also found the BBC had covered up his deceit. “He clearly lied and cheated his way to the interview and that was disgraceful .” The Dyson report documented how Diana’s brother, Earl Spencer, was told by Bashir that his sister was being betrayed by friends, bugged and tracked. Among Bashir’s “evidence” were forged bank statements and one of the wild claims he made to Spencer was that Dimbleby had paid Richard Aylard, Charles’s private secretary. Two years after the interview the princess, unsure who to trust and outside the protective royal bubble, died in a Paris car crash. The Duke of Cambridge said after the Dyson report was published that the deceit contributed to his mother’s isolation and paranoia and Harry said she lost her life because of the ripple effect of a culture of exploitation. “You could argue that there is a direct link between Bashir and her death,” Dimbleby says. It was “a sorry period for the BBC and the individuals involved” but he has little affection for Spencer. “Why did he take such a long time to deliver these body blows against the BBC?” he says. He won’t expand on this, but adds: “Would I like to be in a lifeboat with him when we’re running out of food? No, he’s bigger than I am.” Would he tell royals not to do interviews with someone like him? “I would be very, very chary about doing interviews if I were a senior member of the royal family.” “Ridiculous” is how he describes The Crown, which he no longer watches because he found much of it unbelievable, including a scene where the Queen went to the suburban home of her husband’s adulterous private secretary and they talked about marriage. “I don’t have patience with that kind of garbage.” A few years ago he moved from an organic farm in Devon to a large townhouse in the Clifton area of Bristol. He lives here with his second wife, Jessica, a teacher, and their two daughters, aged 14 and 12. He has two grown-up children from his first marriage, to the journalist Bel Mooney, and four grandchildren. We are talking in the study on the first floor which is adorned with original cartoons, including one from Punch of his father, Richard Dimbleby, the BBC’s correspondent in the Second World War. In this room, with views over a bucolic communal garden, he is writing his fourth book about that war. The most recent book, Barbarossa: How Hitler Lost the War, is an account of the Nazis’ doomed invasion of Russia that is full of resonances — unspeakable horrors, unwilling conscripts, purged generals — right now. In Ukraine, where Russian troops were ordered to dig trenches in radioactive soil, Putin shows the same disregard for his own troops as Stalin, the tyrant he admires. “Putin’s operation is minuscule by comparison with Stalin’s battles in the Second World War, but the attitude is similar.”

Dimbleby, who presented a TV series and wrote a book about his travels in Russia and saw bodies of Russian soldiers returning from Afghanistan and its effect on public opinion, believes that the mounting death toll in Ukraine could be a danger to Putin. “The body bags have the potential to undermine support.” Britain has been doing the right things to support Ukraine, says Dimbleby, but he is a passionate Remainer, and is convinced we would have had more clout if we were still in the EU. “We think Boris Johnson going to Kyiv is a big deal. And of course, the president [of Ukraine] is going to say he is a wonderful friend. But we aren’t as important as what the EU decides.” In Ukraine, though, Johnson already has a street named after him. “I hope Boris Johnson is running out of road rapidly,” Dimbleby says. What does this former BBC and ITV broadcaster think of Nadine Dorries? “She’s the secretary of state for culture, media and sport. Beyond that my mouth is wide open in astonishment.” Selling off Channel 4 is “bizarre, unless it’s a kind of dog-whistle policy to satisfy backbenchers on the right”. The days are numbered for the BBC licence fee in its current form and he suggests it should be linked to council tax bands, an idea that his brother, David, has championed. The veteran television executive Lord Grade of Yarmouth, 79, who has been appointed chairman of Ofcom, the broadcasting regulator, is “a very capable person. He’s my generation, so he has to be! He’s older than I am.” Dimbleby is 77 and plays tennis often. It is hard to imagine Piers Morgan being his cup of tea, but he likes his “chutzpah. He makes me laugh and he’s brilliant at what he does.” On the coffee table is a list, written out by his daughters, of things he could do once his third book was written. These range from playing a game with them, to the slightly brutal: “Have fun and enjoy life.” When his older children were growing up he was constantly travelling. “I just hope that hasn’t made me too inadequate as a father. I’m forgiven a lot by my children.” Barbarossa: How Hitler Lost the War by Jonathan Dimbleby is out in paperback on May 12, published by Penguin Books, £9.99

Jonathan Dimbleby: “Harry and Meghan have trashed the reputation of the Royal Family”