The General goes nutty for Sarah

The Army is no match for Tunbridge Wells’ finest, says the fleet street collective

Two of the place names that figure most fondly and prominently in the rarely-less-than effervescent conversation of Ms Sarah Sands are Tunbridge Wells and Sandhurst. These are the poles - familiar and reassuring - on which Sarah's world spins, and it is largely thanks to them that she has just knocked the real one off its axis.

Her interview, in today's Daily Mail, with General Sir Richard Dannatt, head of the British Army, is a perfect illustration of the military's susceptibility to what it might term "one-of-us, female". Sir Richard, brand new in the job, put his boot straight in it by telling Ms Sands that the Iraq war was a disaster and that Britain should admit as much and withdraw.

This was, by any standards, a huge story. But what made Dannatt confess his doubts to Ms Sands - a foxily petite authority on the

Sands is the kind of journalist who likes the kind of people that journalists don’t

latest look in sunglasses, successful party-throwing, and the correct time for middle-class women to safely go bare-legged - rather than the redoubtable military correspondents of, say, the Daily Telegraph?

Simple. Sarah, who was drummed out of the editor's chair at the Sunday Telegraph last year, after what most observers regarded as a comic interlude, is the evocation of the Indian Mutiny-era officer's wife. Her son has embarked on a career in the military, and her instincts solidly keep the home fires burning. Born in Tunbridge Wells, primed for social intercourse by a formative stint on Harvey Nichols perfume counter, Sarah is the kind of journalist who likes the kind of people journalists don't like.

Add all this to large, hazelnutty eyes and a weapons-grade edge of flirtation, and the danger for men of Dannatt's ilk is grave. "We must think of my people in Tunbridge Wells," she would trill at the Sunday Telegraph. Dannatt probably was. Which is how he has landed himself in so much trouble.

FIRST POSTED OCTOBER 13, 2006