Before boarding the flight to Moscow, it dawned on me that I might have somehow contracted swine flu from Michael Nyman. What was I to do? This is not what I had in mind when I decided to bring a taste of Britain to Russia. I felt embarrassed. But stranger things have happened in my life. The reason behind my fear was my sudden ill health and an email from Nyman saying he wasn’t feeling his best due some kind of flu — apparently contracted in Mexico.

Douglas Eden reveals the extraordinary penetration of the 1970s Labour movement by pro-Soviet trade unionists and the extent of Callaghan’s toleration of the hard LeftThirtieth anniversaries have been in vogue this year. So far, there have been seminars and conferences to commemorate the notorious 1979 Winter of Discontent and the subsequent election of Margaret Thatcher’s government. Still missing is observance of the defeat of the Left’s project, led from the trade unions, to transfigure parliamentary demo-cracy into a form of soviet state.

In an exclusive interview, Dick Cheney tells Daniel Collings that Obama is wrong to say sorry for waterboarding and enhanced interrogation techniques. The former Vice-President turned critic-in-chief has no regrets: if he upset Blair, he was ‘just doing his job’Richard B. Cheney, the 46th Vice-President of the United States, is back. Though he left the White House wheelchair-bound in January, looking for all the world like he just wanted to see out his days fishing in Wyoming, his retirement didn’t last long.