British Prime Minister Tony Blair last night gave his full backing to the Foreign Secretary, Robin Cook, over his estranged wife's claim that he had had a string of affairs before he ended their 28-year marriage.
Margaret Cook herself stressed yesterday that remarks in a new book in which she criticises both her husband and Downing Street over the affair "relate to things which were said a long time ago."
Mrs Cook, an Edinburgh-based hospital consultant, was interviewed by Linda McDougall, who is married to MP Austin Mitchell. In the book, Westminster Women, she indicated she could have lived with her husband's previous affairs if the relationship with Gaynor Regan had not burst into the open last August.
She complained that a call from Alastair Campbell, Mr Blair's chief press secretary, had ended the marriage. But Mr Campbell rejected suggestions that he issued Mr Cook with a 24-hour ultimatum to decide between his wife and his mistress.
Quentin Tarantino is to act in a stage version of Wait Until Dark, the 1967 film with Audrey Hepburn. The director of Pulp Fiction and the just eleased Jackie Brown said he would be starting on Broadway in March, and added he would love to make a horror movie and work with Al Pacino.
Peter Mandelson emerged from a coal mine yesterday, face blackened, to reaffirm the British government's support for the industry.
The Minister without Portfolio donned a boiler suit and helmet to travel 700 metres into a coal seam at Kellingley colliery in west Yorkshire, to chat with men at the heart of the troubled industry.
A bitter four-year feud over the manuscripts of Russian novelist Boris Pasternak might be resolved this month when his immediate relatives meet the family of his mistress in court. Olga Ivinskaya was the inspiration for Lara, the heroine of Doctor Zhivago.
The feud centres on 154 pieces of writing by Pasternak which were seized by the KGB after the Nobel laureate's death in 1960. Ivinskaya's daughter Irina Emelianova has already managed to acquire part of the KGB collection, arguing that most of the documents were love letters to her mother.