Entry 13:

Dear Alexander,

Are you up yet, and have you recovered from your massive hangover?

Did you watch Newsnight last night? Nothing back home matches it for relevance and acuity, even though Nightline, which it most resembles, is a fine program. I'm always pleased when I turn on Newsnight--not so often, in this era of tiny children and the need to go to bed early so that I will not fall into a stupor on the tube and miss all the stops--and find that Jeremy Paxman is sitting in the anchor's chair.

He wakes me up immediately. Appearing chronically irascible and barely able to disguise his sincere belief that most people, let's face it, are slower off the mark than he is, Paxman is is an equal-opportunity skewerer, a man who once said that when he speaks to an official, his immediate response is to wonder "why that lying bastard is lying to me." This might seem unfair, and sometimes it is. But the British government, with its sweeping Official Secrets Act making it illegal for anyone in the government to leak anything to reporters that isn't an officially sanctioned "leak," is maddeningly difficult to penetrate. And the inherent respect for authority that still persists gives many officials, government or otherwise, the arrogant assumption that they don't have to answer to anyone. And of course they all hate the press and especially don't want to answer to them.

But Paxman makes them answer. If they don't answer, he asks them again. Famously, he once asked a government minister the same question some 18 times--when the guy tried to fudge and obfuscate and make excuses, Paxman just repeated the question, looking more and more like an implacable Fury as the minutes ticked by. If the officials try to make speeches and go into long policy reveries without addressing the central issues, Paxman interrupts. If they say something stupid, he begins his next question with a curt "Come on." It's a joy to watch his thick eyebrows rise ever so slightly, every so ironically, when he's listening to a particularly idiotic explanation.

Weirdly enough, it's the newspapers here that seem oddly soft and shallow and unwilling to dig--charges usually leveled at television news in America. Why do you think that is?

I'm off now, for a long, painful slog on the tube, during which I will try to remain conscious at all times. The Dome is at the end.

xxxxx sarah