United 93

After meeting the Home Secretary, I went to the cast and crew premiere of United 93, the new Paul Greengrass film. It was extraordinary. Shatteringly compassionate and humane, and harrowing and heart-ripping, and everyone, everyone should watch it, take the journey with those people in that doomed plane, for the two hours, pray and struggle and engage with the fight, even to the end, even ithough it is almost unbearable to do so. I have never seen anything like it and I cannot think of how it could be bettered. It is not made too soon; it is important that it was made and that it is watched, for in those ordinary lives we all are. In the mundanity of a cup of coffee, the gazing out of a window at a brilliant blue sky, then the fear and screams, and the tears and the desperation and the final, comforting touch of a stranger's hand on your own. In the grief and the bravery and the despair and the anger, and the final submission to what is coming, but to submit having tried, having tried your best, to change the world a little, and to divert the horror from others that you cannot escape yourself.

The film opens in June. Paul Greengrass asked me if I would like his support for a public enquiry into July 7th.

I just kissed him. I couldn't speak.

Yes. Thank you.