She has experience on a wide range of international issues having been a foreign correspondent in Moscow, Paris and Washington and a special correspondent in China – so she’s always fascinating to read because an international perspective informs her writing on Britain.

Never afraid to challenge the consensus, she has the knack of being in the right place at the right time. She was in Moscow during the collapse of communism and the dissolution of the Soviet Union; her five years in Washington culminated in the tied election of 2000 that brought George W Bush to the presidency; and she was diplomatic correspondent and editorial writer for the Independent before, during and after the Iraq War.