I am now happily in the Outer Hebrides. This makes it much harder to send the police to intimidate me because a) they will have to find me b) I shall… - Craig Murray

[The emails indicate] the toxic relationships within the SNP group at Westminster, where McDonald regards himself as in a very small minority of Sturgeon loyalists.

I'm an Anglo really, born in England, like Sandy Lyle and Rod Stewart [...] but my father came from this huge Edinburgh family. He was in the forces and was posted down to Norfolk, which is where he met my mum. I grew up down in Norfolk, but I went back up to - and always spent a lot of time in - Scotland.

I can say from my own dealings with Murray that he is an approachable and compassionate man, who has become a hero in Uzbekistan. Two colleagues from PEN, the writers' organisation whose Writers in Prison Committee I chair, have just returned from Tashkent full of praise for him, describing how he has become virtually the only source of assistance for desperate families whose relatives have been tortured or disappeared.