* The hunting ban was a manifesto commitment, as were other undertakings which animal welfare groups hoped to see implemented after making contributions to the Labour Party election campaign.
* First confused reports of the car crash in a Paris underpass suggested that Princess Diana had survived. Her friend Dodi Al Fayed (son of businessman Mohammed Al Fayed) and the driver died at the scene but the Princess and her bodyguard were cut from the wreckage and rushed to hospital. Only the bodyguard survived.
* TB = Tony Blair; GB = Gordon Brown; Peter = Peter Mandelson.
* Formula One’s president, Bernie Ecclestone, had made a £1 million donation to the Labour Party, which secured an exemption from a ban on cigarette advertising at Formula One’s motor racing events. It emerged that David Mills, the husband of MP Tessa Jowell (Public Health Minister at the time), had a business relationship with Ecclestone. It was the first allegation of ‘sleaze’ – which had bedevilled the Conservatives’ last years – to tarnish the recently elected Labour government.
* Sir Robert Atkins, Conservative MP from 1979 to 1997, was made a member of the Privy Council in 1995.
* Chris Mullin invariably referred to Prime Minister Tony Blair as ‘The Man’ or the ‘Main Man’.
* The Select Committee on Culture, Media and Sport (formerly National Heritage), chaired by Gerald Kaufman, produced some very critical reports on the running of the Royal Opera House (home to The Royal Ballet).
* Rosamund John was married to John Silkin, Labour MP for Deptford. She died in October the same year.
* A reference to the ‘Cash for Questions’ scandal in which a few Conservative MPs had been caught offering to ask parliamentary questions in return for payment.
* The Real IRA detonated a car bomb in the town of Omagh, County Tyrone, Northern Ireland, on Saturday afternoon, 15 August, killing twenty-nine people and injuring hundreds.
* Both members of Tony Blair’s political office: Anji Hunter was Director of Government Relations, 1997–2001, a post which Sally Morgan assumed for a few years.
* The earlier war with Iraq over Kuwait in 1991 rumbled on throughout the 1990s. Saddam Hussein consistently refused to comply with UN Security Council resolutions on weapons inspections in his country and in September 1998 the US (under President Clinton) passed the Iraq Liberation Act; four days of bombing followed in December.
* A month before, Peter Mandelson had resigned as a Minister after failing to declare a loan from Geoffrey Robinson, who had become Paymaster General in 1997 (a post he held until January 1999 when he also resigned on account of the loan to Mandelson). Giles Radice commented that it was ‘hardly a hanging matter’.
† Alan Simpson was Labour MP for Nottingham South and a keen environmentalist.
* Labour MPs for Bristol East and for Norwich respectively.
† As Chairman of the Home Affairs Committee, Chris Mullin would be entitled to be kept closely informed on Home Office policy; the inquiry was into the misconduct of the initial police investigation into Stephen Lawrence’s murder in April 1993.
* Sebastian Coe was Chief of Staff to William Hague; Amanda Platell was Hague’s press secretary. Gyles Brandreth was defeated in Chester in 1997 and returned to journalism and other professions.
* Alan Clark died on 5 September 1999 from a brain tumour.
* Derek Hatton had been deputy leader of Liverpool City Council in the 1980s and a supporter of the Militant tendency, which many in the Labour Party blamed for Liverpool’s troubles; Militant members were gradually expelled from the Labour Party after 1983.
* George J. Mitchell, a former US Senator, was appointed US Special Envoy for Northern Ireland by the Clinton administration.
* General Augusto Pinochet had been visiting London for medical treatment in 1998 when he was detained under an international arrest warrant for crimes against humanity, committed during his period of office in Chile as President, 1973–90. Four thousand Chileans were murdered or disappeared. Home Secretary Jack Straw ultimately allowed his release on medical grounds and he returned to Chile.
* Nigel Farage was UK Independence Party MEP for South East England, later leader of UKIP; Malcolm Pearson was a Conservative peer who later joined UKIP and was briefly its leader in 2009.
* Farmer Tony Martin had shot a burglar who had entered his home and was charged with murder: it raised a very passionate public debate on victims’ rights of self-defence against criminals.
† The blockade of oil depots was undertaken by various groups including lorry drivers, hauliers and countryside campaigners such as Farmers for Action.
* Caroline Benn was suffering from cancer and Tony Benn had decided to give up his seat at the forthcoming General Election (2001) to care for her. She died on 22 November 2000.
* Foot and mouth disease swept through herds of sheep and cattle across the country during 2001: ten million animals were killed to halt the disease.
* David Davis was Conservative MP for Haltemprice and Howden, Yorkshire: once seen as a potential Conservative leader.
* Once prisoners (or enemy combatants) from the Afghan War and others implicated in the 9/11 attacks began to arrive at a special American prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, a debate began on their status and their future prosecution, and the applicability of the Geneva Conventions on War to the men. Donald Rumsfeld stated that al-Qaeda and Taliban members were not entitled to prisoner of war status. Colin Powell was at that time Secretary of State in the US government.
* Rebekah Wade, editor of the News of the World, married the actor Ross Kemp (who played the part of Grant Mitchell in TV soap opera EastEnders). They divorced in 2009 and she married Charlie Brooks.
† A statement on the future of aviation in Britain had been made to the Commons the day before.
* Iain Duncan Smith (‘IDS’), the MP for Chingford and Wood Green, became leader of the Conservative Party in September 2001, just after 9/11, after William Hague stepped down. At this stage Duncan Smith’s leadership of his party was in question.
* Zoran Djindjic, the reformist Prime Minister of Serbia, was assassinated; he had acquired many enemies during the complex disintegration of former Yugoslavia who saw him as a ‘traitor’ to Serbia.
* A News International Endowment funds several posts at Oxford, including the Rupert Murdoch Professorship of Language and Communication.
† Tom Hurndall was a twenty-one-year-old student photojournalist covering the ‘human shields’ in Iraq, and the International Solidarity Movement. He had gone to Rafah, a Palestinian town on the border of the Gaza strip with Egypt; the Israeli army had a strong presence there and Tom was shot in the head by an Israeli sniper on 11 April 2003 while trying to rescue two children from gunfire. He died nine months later. A year after his death an Israeli soldier was sentenced to eight years for Tom’s manslaughter.
* Iraq: its Infrastructure of Concealment, Deception and Intimidation.
* Iain Duncan Smith was ‘deposed’ after a sufficient number of Conservative MPs (as laid down in Party rules) wrote privately to the Chairman of the 1922 Committee (Michael Spicer) withdrawing their support from his leadership. It marked the end of the Euro-sceptic or Euro-realist ascendancy in the parliamentary party.
* Lord Hutton, a judge, was appointed in August 2003 to investigate the circumstances of Dr David Kelly’s death. His findings took many people by surprise, attacking BBC standards, vindicating the government and exonerating Alastair Campbell.
* Nicholas Hytner was the artistic director of the National Theatre, and director of The History Boys by Bennett.
* Oona King was having IVF treatment at the time.
* Boris Johnson was the MP for Henley, Conservative arts spokesman and editor of the Spectator. He was elected Mayor of London in May 2008 and re-elected in May 2012.
* The first of two volumes of diaries, The Insider: The Private Diaries of a Scandalous Decade by Piers Morgan.
* Prince Charles claimed to have been ‘taken by surprise’ when Robert Mugabe leaned over to greet him. Zimbabwe, of which Robert Mugabe is President, had been suspended from the Commonwealth in 1992 and Mugabe then withdrew from the Commonwealth.
* They rejected the new constitution by 63 to 37 per cent. Tony Blair announced shortly after that there would not now be a British referendum on the EU Constitution.
* Tony Benn remained wedded to the WordPerfect programme long after Microsoft Word had replaced it on most PCs.
* Ruth Kelly was appointed Secretary of State for Education and Skills in December 2004, following David Blunkett’s resignation.
† Galloway had sued for libel over claims by the Telegraph that he had benefited financially from Iraq’s ‘oil-for-food’ programme imposed on Iraq after the war.
‡ Big Brother: a reality television programme in which ‘celebrities’ subjected themselves to twenty-four-hour-a-day TV surveillance in a shared house, and were successively voted out by the audience. Peter Bazalgette, the force behind it and other highly successful television formats, was knighted for services to broadcasting in 2012.
* Senlis Council (now called the International Council on Security and Development) is an organisation active in Afghanistan that has campaigned publicly against the unsuccessful (and disastrous) poppy eradication policy, in favour of allowing the trade to be licensed for medical use.
* Tony Blair had announced from his Sedgefield constituency that he was standing down as Prime Minister in June 2007.