injured during violent protests in bristol. thousands of people gathered to oppose the uk government's police and crime bill which would give forces in england and wales more powers to curb protests. clashes then broke out at a city centre police station. parts of new south wales in australia are suffering their worst floods in a century. torrential downpours have caused dams to overflow and river levels to surge. around 1,000 people in the western suburbs of sydney are the latest to be urged to evacuate their homes. city officials in miami beach in florida have approved an extension to a state of emergency after thousands of tourists descended for the annual spring break holiday, risking the spread of coronavirus. the decision means that a night—time curfew will continue for at least three weeks. now on bbc news, it's hardtalk.

welcome to hardtalk, i'm stephen sackur. the proportion of wealth owned by a super—rich elite continues to grow in societies around the world. the glaring disparity between the have—mosts and the have—nothings has fuelled a wave of political anger. well, my guest today, the former newspaper columnist and editor, and one—time high society hostess, barbara amiel, has written a memoir which, wittingly or not, paints an extraordinary, even grotesque picture of the lives of the wealthy. so, why on earth did she do it?

barbara amiel in toronto, welcome to hardtalk. thank you, good to be here. pleasure to have you on the show. let us begin by discussing your memoir, friends and enemies, that you wrote last year. most people write memoirs, i would say, to make themselves look good. your memoir, perhaps you would agree, didn't really do that. so, why did you write it? i don't know whether it made me look good or bad, but to be perfectly honest, i tried to be honest. when you reach the stage in life that i've reached, 80, there is really no point in gilding the lily. you hope it'll work out, you hope that there's something redeemable in the life you've lived, and you tell it — to use a horrible phrase — "like it is".

and i tried to do that. right, but it is full of anger. it seems to be fuelled by a desire for vengeance, and it tells a whole host of anecdotes and stories about erstwhile friends who have become enemies. and i guess you would accept that that perhaps doesn't reflect very well on them, when we get to the content, but it also, in terms of its motivation, doesn't really reflect very well on you, either. well, i think there are a number of things that don't reflect well on me. i wouldn't put that at the top of the list. i think that, erm, you... people may desert you, or at least that's what you think they've done. but, as you live the life i've lived, you gradually realise that you are not the centre of everyone�*s life, and that, when bad things happen to you, it's not a crime on the part of many people not to want to be around you. they've got their own lives to live. they don't want to hear about your troubles non—stop, and theyjust

get on with living. so, i don't think that everyone should be classed as an enemy just because they don't stand by you and hold your hand. before we get to your life in the very top of high society, let us go back a little bit to the young barbara, who grew up in very difficult circumstances. you were born in the uk in a suburb of london, but by the time you were a teenager, you were taken by your mum and your stepfather to canada, because your own birth father had committed suicide. and by the time you were in your mid teens, you'd basically been chucked out of the family home. that must have had a huge impact upon you. actually, it didn't have as much impact as you think. and i didn't really think of myself as hard done by. it seemed to me a logical thing. my mother was a... i think the phrase now is borderline personality. she was an emotionally

and mentally disturbed woman. i reminded her of my father, who she apparently loved very much, and i certainly loved him very much. and, on looking at me, she would invariably go into the bathroom, lock the door, and attempt suicide. and my stepfather decided that, for the sake of his wife, it was better i not live at home. and so, it was a bit of a surprise to come home and see my things in cardboard boxes on the doorstep. but i understood the rationale behind it. and, in fact, living alone when you're 14 is not so bad. you have no rules, you have no parents. if you can find a job and keep things going, you can make a perfectly decent life for yourself. in those days, it was easier to do — bear in mind, we're talking about the �*50s. i think it might be harder now, but i could get a job, i could lie about my age, and i managed.

what strikes me is that after what, in anybody�*s terms, i think was a pretty tough adolescence and young womanhood, you showed extraordinary resilience. you chose ultimately to go into the media, and you actually broke some ground. i think i'm right in saying you became the first female editor of the toronto sun in canada. so you were extraordinarily successful, actually, despite the difficulties of your past. and yet — and i don't wish to sound like a pop, sort of, psychologist — that professional success doesn't seem to have been enough. and i'm wondering why. well, i think most people — and i suspect, if you looked into your own soul, you'd find that most people want to do better professionally. they also, in my case, want to have a parallel life — in my case, a love life. and i wanted to enjoy things.

it was hard for me to enjoy things because i have this incredibly pessimistic nature, and assume that, around the corner, the next ghastly thing is going to happen. i was the first woman in canada to be the editor of a daily metropolitan newspaper. and my british assistant keeps telling me that i was the first woman in north america who got it through her own merits, rather than inheriting it from mummy or daddy. but i didn't think of it in terms like that. ijust wanted to get better. and i never lived up to my own expectations, and i never lived up to my own standards. so, it was jolly disappointing. when you were independent and successful, did you see yourself as a feminist? not remotely. i mean, stephen, i come from a family where my great—grandmother worked, my grandmother worked. every woman i knew worked. and i didn't know anything about glass ceilings. and i think european

women are somewhat more sophisticated about work than north american women. north american women always struck me as the most coddled women in the world, but the ones that complain the loudest. so, i didn't see myself as a feminist because it was just not something on my radar screen. i found that it was difficult to get ahead, but i did not attribute that to gender. in fact, i found that my gender injournalism, at least, was as much a help as a hindrance. interesting — to my previous question, you said that you not only wanted professional success, you wanted love, you wanted relationships. your memoir — and this is where it gets intensely personal — suggests that you actually saw friendships, relationships with men and, indeed, sex in transactional terms. you know, it's funny, that's a favourite word of interviewers. and i don't think it's totally inaccurate, but it certainly isn't the whole story.

when i fell in love, i fell in love in absolutely crazy, hopeless ways. if i used sex transactionally, it wasn't in quite the way that you're suggesting. in other words, i didn't sleep with someone to get ahead in a job. i think the one incident you're referring to is my relationship with george weidenfeld, who i adored. and, if i may, barbara, to interject, lord weidenfeld — who actually we've had on hardtalk, as well, of course, no longer alive — but he was renowned in london as a great publisher and socialite, and womaniser. you very bluntly say that, i think, while you were still in your third marriage — but you're in the uk — you became close to weidenfeld, and he clearly became besotted with you. and you say, and i'm going to quote this at some

length, "being with him, i thought rather calculatingly "gave me access and status. "weidenfeld knew everyone, from intellectuals, artists, "he threw great parties. "i was trying to hang on to the social advantages "without incurring the payment required sexually. "and the only way i could deal with it was to avoid actual "body—to—body contact and pleasure him orally." i'm reading it out, but there is a question underpinning it, which is, if that is not calculating, manipulative, and transactional, i don't know what is. well, i do think it is calculating, manipulative, and transactional. although you have left out other lines that i wrote, in which i said how much i loved his conversation, how much i loved his being, his sense of humour, and his intellectual brilliance. but the part that you read, i cannot take back. i might have written it a little more, erm... oh, i don't know, a little more gently, but it's true. i did enjoy the notion

of sitting next to great writers, politicians. i did want to hang on to ourfriendship. and what would've happened was, under normal circumstances — because he had many, many women friends with whom he did not have a sexual relationship — under normal circumstances, i would've liked to have just been a friend that he wanted to be with, because my conversation was so sparkling and brilliant. but obviously, my conversation wasn't so sparkling and brilliant, and he had other feelings for me. and in order to hang on to the parts that i liked, i had to cope with his feelings. now, if i had been a totally honest and decent person, i would just have turned my back and said, "all right, i'm "going to give up the dinners. "i'm going to give up the good conversation and the laughter, "and the fun i had with him, because i can't make the "payment he requires for it." but unfortunately, i wasn't that decent a person. i wanted both. and so, yes, you're right.

in that one relationship, there was a transactional sexual aspect. yeah. i mean, i don't wish to dwell on difficult stuff, because there's lots to talk about. butjust one more relationship i do wish to ask you about, which is with the australian media mogul, kerry packer. it's a very bizarre episode. and again, you've written about it, so i feel entitled to ask you because you've been very open about it, but ijust don't know what was going on inside your head. he asked you a couple of times, at least, i think, to go to a casino with him, just to sit with him, be close to him, and watch him gamble vast amounts of money. and when he won even more vast amounts of money, he just gave you £100,000 on two different occasions. and, rather than refuse it out of any, sort of, sense of, i don't know, dignity, you pocketed the money. what was going on then, do you think? well, i think you're playing it, if i may say so, not quite accurately.

i had no relationship whatsoever with kerry packer. i was actually out to dinner with a gentleman that i did know. and kerry packer, who i had never met in my life, appeared. and it turned out that the gentleman i was having dinner with was his adviser in gambling matters, and said, "would you like to come upstairs and see "what we're doing?" and i'm a journalist, i've never been in a casino before, i hadn't seen these private rooms, so i had no idea what i was going to see — but it could have been a column. and i went upstairs. it was just kerry gambling. i didn't know who he was. i didn't know how much he gambled. and i sat there and watched in astonishment as this stranger next to me insisted on showing me that he was writing cheques for £500,000 a hand. when it was all over, he had won, i don't know, 12 or £15 million for the evening. and we went downstairs,

and my date said, "just wait "a moment," and came back and handed me this cheque for £100,000. and i did protest, as i wrote in the book. i said, "look, i can't possibly take this," and i went on and on. my date looked at me with this, sort of, world—weary thing and said, "this is the way it works. "kerry always does this." the next night was a repeat. i tried to get out of it because i was on a column deadline. his chauffeur turned up. i could have said no, but at that point, it seemed pointless. the same thing happened. i was told to wear the same clothes — i guess they're superstitious. i sat next to him, i drank the same cup of tea. he won again. this time, we had half of south america with us, because his polo team joined us, as well. every member of the polo team got the same cheque. and apparently, this is what kerry does and what many big—time gamblers do. when they win, they have a, sort of, superstition, and they give part of it to everyone around. now...

sorry, barbara. i mean, the stories are, in their own right, fascinating, kind of spellbinding. but when the amalgam of them comes together, including just the more prosaic detail of the houses that you and your husband—to—be, conrad black, bought in the course of your great successes in the 1990s in london and new york, and palm beach, and all the vast closets of manolo blahnik shoes and the jewellery, and the birkin and hermes handbags — all this stuff you write about at great length, the obsession you had with, for a while, material things and being seen at the right parties and hosting the right dinners for the best—connected people in the world. from the outside, it all looks kind of repulsive, and i wonder whether you get that? and are you, in a way, repulsed by the world that you occupied at that time? i'm repulsed, isuppose, by the years i wasted,

because life ends up being rather short. and it pains me very much that i wasted time on this. it doesn't pain me that i was with conrad. i think that's the best decision i ever made in my entire life. in terms of the collecting of shoes and chaneljackets, i appear to have been ahead of my time. london now seems to be awash with people who have a thousand times more pairs of shoes. but nevertheless, i was certainly excessive in my consumption. i always had been when i was much younger, although i didn't have the budget. i was always having to write an extra article to pay for the jacket i had just got. so, this was not something new, it was just on a bigger scale. i think what was repulsive about my life — and actually, i rather resent being told i'm completely repulsive of my lifestyle, but it is probably a fairjudgment on your part — i think what was repulsive was that i wasted time,

particularly in new york. because in london, you see, conrad was a proprietor. the parties he gave were all part of meeting people that the paper could then take advantage of, could interview, contacts, news department. but in new york, it wasn't like that at all. in new york, it was purely social. and it was a society that, by and large, bored the living daylights out of me. except i was fascinated with their consumption and, because i was a weak and shallow person — and i don't say this in any breast—beating way, i mean, it's rather matter of fact — i wanted to be like them. i want to ask you about... i wanted to... sorry, i want to ask you about one particular question, which i think is important. and the word that i'm interested in is "entitlement". a former editor of yours on the daily telegraph, sarah sands, said, "there's something of the ancient greek "about barbara and conrad's disdain for ordinary people "and their belief in the entitlement of the elite." and it's an important word

because entitlement often, it seems, to people not in this elite world, leads elite people to think that there's one set of rules for them, and another set of rules for everybody else. was that yours and conrad's approach to life? well, with all due respect to sarah sands, who's actually a person i like very much and whose talents i admire, i think that's absolute bunk. the reason — it's almost proven bunk, because i knew conrad was going to be all right in prison — was because he was always interested in everyone. he was as interested in the janitor as much as he was in the high society. but, if i may, never mind all that and how he coped in prison, butjust on this point of entitlement — and for people who aren't remembering so well, your husband, conrad black, was ultimately convicted in a us court of serious crimes, obstruction ofjustice and fraud, he was originally sentenced to 78 months, it was shortened later. but he did spend a significant

amount of time in prison as a convicted criminal. and ijust wonder, first of all, whether you knew, as his wife, that he was up to crooked business? and second of all, whether you and he felt that somehow, it was ok, that you were somehow allowed to get away with it? are you mad? do you think that i would have stayed with a criminal? i know that i'm the spouse, and therefore, she would say it, wouldn't she? but my husband was 100% innocent, which is why the most left—wing justice on the us supreme court, ruth bader ginsburg, wrote in herjudgment vacating all the convictions against him that they had to use invented law to convict him. and that was part of herjudgment. the fact was that when it went down to a lower court, there was a judge of great hostility who managed to reinstate one or two charges.

and i think he was, in the end convicted of stealing something like $200,000 by wire fraud — which is a crime which doesn't even exist in most countries. the obstruction ofjustice was complete nonsense. it took place theoretically in canada, and the canadian court said there was no obstruction ofjustice. so, i think you're being — you're slanting things. my husband was entirely innocent. and, were he not, i would not have been there. i am many bad things, i am many horrible things, possibly, you make your own judgments. but one thing i am not is a criminal. when he came out, you built a life with him, but it was a life very different from the life before. and you, again, going back to the concept of enemies and, indeed, maybe vengeance as well, you do dish the dirt on all the people who, after the fall of conrad, and i suppose that meant your

fall, as well, in social circles, chose to ignore you, blank you, disdain you. and it goes from all of your high—society friends in new york city to even your hairdresser. has that made you... has it made you feel that the life you led for so long was a completely false and fantasy life? is that how you feel about it now? not entirely, although that's an aspect of it. you know, it's ironic because one of the first articles i wrote before i had a full—time job writing was called "in defence of vengeance". i did not see this book as a vengeful book. and it may be that i should never have kept the title — which was the working title, friends and enemies — because it doesn't tell the whole truth about the book. my hairdresserfired me, and it really is horrid to be fired by your hairdresser. so, what i did in the book was i mentioned exactly what happened to us,

and i let the chips fall where they may. are you, er, and i'm thinking of an earlier part of our conversation, you began life as this extraordinarily strong—willed, independent, resilient journalist, and yet, in the end, you lived a life which was much more — and again, i don't mean to be pejorative — but much more about networking, social climbing, and living the grandest of grand lives than it was about, you know, reporting on the way the world works, socialjustice issues, perhaps, you know, issues of fairness in this world, challenges to the inequality in this world. if you could live your life over again, would you choose to prioritise very differently? and what lessons do you think can be learned from your life by young women in 2021? well, because i am not an entirely vengeful person, i will not send you all my columns. but i never stopped working for one day when i was married with conrad.

in fact, if anything, i wrote more when i was married with him in terms of political columns, social issues, than when i wasn't working. so, i never sat back and just enjoyed myself. i kept working all through it. did i waste my life? what can i tell young women? i can tell young women that they should take a course in financial planning, because i bitterly regret that i did not know how to conserve money when i had it. and i think that taking courses in financial planning would be a hell of a lot more useful than taking courses in gender studies. do i regret the time i wasted? of course i regret it. what the hell is the point of going to endless charity dinners, talking to people that really do bore you, when in fact you could be staying at home writing — which later on, even before the troubles began, is what i started doing. but i didn't do it soon enough. final thought. in a way, i'm very confused

because your book is so honest. and yet, obviously, as you've frankly said to me, you know that quite a lot of it reflects very badly on yourself. would you say today that you are someone who enjoys a high level of self—awareness, or not? you know, it's funny, some critics say that i'm blatantly unaware because i say my husband is innocent. believe me, as a research journalist, i researched every aspect of what he did. so, i'm not blatantly unaware of that. i hope i have some understanding of my weaknesses and frailties. i think i have some understanding of the value i bring to life. i don't know. you have to be the judge. i really, you know, it's very hard for a person to judge themselves, because we always want to be better than we are. and, as i said, i wrote as honestly as i could, and that's the best any

writer can do. barbara amiel, it's been a pleasure having you on hardtalk. thank you very much. thank you, stephen. hello there. it looks like our weather pattern is going to change over the week ahead. for the past few days we've had quiet, settled weather. it's been warm when the sun has been out. high pressure in charge. let me show you the upper level winds, the jet stream, that's the position of the jet stream and you can see how undulating that pattern is right now. but as we head into the week, we get more of a zonal flow. west—to—east wind coming in and bringing in air from the atlantic, and lower

pressure means the weather is eventually going to turn more unsettled. fairly quiet at the moment, still. we've got a chilly start underneath those clear skies. more cloud coming into northern ireland, north west england and especially western scotland. a little light rain or drizzle here. elsewhere it looks like it's going to be a dry day. some sunshine at times, light winds, temperatures again peaking at 13 or 1a celsius through the midlands, south east england, east anglia and the north east of scotland. moving quickly onto tuesday, and we've got a fresher breeze picking up. south or south—westerly wind, looks like it's going to bring in a lot of cloud. maybe some dampness in the air out towards the west ahead of a band of rain that comes into northern ireland, western scotland later. temperatures again are perhaps 13 or 1a in the east where skies should be a bit brighter. we start to see the weather changing, though from midweek. that weather front bringing rain down from the north west into england and wales, not going to amount to very much at all. still dry in the south east for a while. after that band of patchy rain, we get some sunshine and then the weather turns wetter

in the north west, especially into western scotland. the winds are bit stronger here. elsewhere, the winds should be fairly light which is why that band of cloud and rain isn't moving very far. temperatures not changing very much, again, on wednesday. the winds continue to pick up though, i think, during thursday and we start to see some mixture, really, of sunshine and showers. some wetter weather, though, a band of rain coming into northern ireland, into western scotland through the day. and temperatures of 12, 13, maybe 1a celsius — near normal for this time of the year. but as we head towards the end of the week, we've got low pressure in charge. that's coming down from greenland, settling between iceland and scotland and that's going to bring colder air across the uk together with some much stronger wind. and we're looking at some bands of rain or showers and it's cold enough for those showers to be wintry over northern hills, perhaps even down into parts of wales as well. temperature wise, 7 celsius in the north, maybe making double figures in the south east.

this is bbc news — i'm lewis vaughanjones with the latest headlines for viewers in the uk and around the world. violent clashes on the streets of bristol — after thousands protest against increased police powers to control british demonstrations. blocked off, now, the end of the city center street, but also the side roads too. and they are doing it from behind, but there are still about a thousand people in here and now they are being left with nowhere to go. mass evacuations — as south—east australia is struck by the worst floods in a century — the prime minister offers emergency funds to those affected. warnings of a humanitarian crisis on the us border — as record numbers try to illegally, cross into america. officials in miami beach extend

the state of emergency and enforce a curfew — after spring break