by the time i'd got out of the car, i was pretty hammered, and i think she was, too, although she was in better shape than i was, she could drink me under the table. and ijust thought, you know, i don't need many days like this in my life, one day, this will carry me on for quite a long time. you moved to america in 1996. you ended up spending more than half your career working there for the guardian. was it initially difficult, as an outsider, to understand what made that country tick? it was. for some things it always was, to be honest, guns. i never quite understood, although, you know, i got further than i was at the beginning. and, you know, in a way, as a foreign correspondent, not understanding is a bit of a gift, really, because then you can go and find out. but it was like anthropology, really, you could kind of prod around and it would work quite well in moments of kind of, where other american journalists might not want to go, you know, having steak with a bunch of trump republicans,