“This,” said Harry, “is the nice part of town.”Harry was at the wheel. The one shop that seemed to be thriving on Good Hope Avenue had a “We repair windows” sign on the door. Plenty of liquor stores, though, and shop after shop with wooden boards for windows. Quite a few churches too and posters on lamp-posts which read “God loves you” and “Thou shalt not kill” – a wishful entreaty in the neighbourhood with probably the highest number of murders in America. The only white people who live here are insane – the inmates of Washington’s one mental hospital, St Elizabeth’s.

John Hinckley, who tried to kill Ronald Reagan, is here, locked away inside a four-storey Victorian building with red ramparts and black metal doors.On the streets you do not see one white face, not one restaurant, not one bank. He took me over the Anacostia River into deepest South East – a corner of Washington as segregated from the rest of the city as Soweto is from Johannesburg. Dream City is about Washington and Marion Barry, the convicted crack-user recently re-elected mayor by the black majority of the electorate. As the year 2000 approaches, Harry’s book concludes, the city has become a mirror for America’s inability to resolve the paramount problem of race.At our first meeting a month ago, Harry promised that he would take me on a tour of the Washington “the white folks don’t know” On Monday he lived up to his word. I get on like a house on fire with the black security guard at our building and when I go out to the coffee-shop next door for lunch I see black and white secretaries sitting at the same table, chatting unselfconsciously over their bagels.”In downtown Washington,” my friend Harry said, “you could be forgiven for thinking that Martin Luther King’s dream had come true.”Harry Jaffe, who is a neighbour of mine, has written a book about Washington called Dream City and works on the staff of the Washingtonian magazine. Next door to the deli is Politics and Prose, a bookshop where the local literati drink cappuccinos and read poetry aloud.
The White House, the white Capitol, the white National Monument and the white Graeco-Roman facades of the federal buildings in the city’s historic centre spaciously convey the imperial splendour befitting the capital of the richest, most powerful nation on earth Race, I had heard, was a big problem in Washington But you don’t see it downtown.

Around the corner there’s a national park where deer graze and, half a mile away, a deli called Marvellous Market, which sells fine Italian cheeses and freshly baked croissants. I have an elegant red- brick home in a crime-free suburban neighbourhood of ample gardens and tall trees. Until I crossed the Anacostia, two months in Washington had persuaded me there was no more pleasant city on God’s earth. While The Madness of King George does not jeopardise the fairmindedness of his jurors, they won’t be seeing his Prime Suspect tapes in the near future..

When Ms Mirren was informed, she sent him the tapes, he said.It is not known how much the judge, who is married to a Los Angeles police captain, has learnt about British police methods from the popular series, or how these compare with those of the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD).But he is clear on one front. But the judge’s warmest praise was reserved for his screen wife.”He sent us the most beautiful letter to us, thanking us for the picture and wanting to be sure that Helen Mirren would know how much he and his wife enjoyed it,” said Sam Goldwyn. So he viewed the film before recommending it to the panel, and firing off an approving note to the Samuel Goldwyn Company, the producers.Most critics have concentrated on the extraordinary performance of Nigel Hawthorne,nominated for a Best Actor Oscar. Although it was not likely the lunacy of a British 18th-century monarch would bear much relationship to the allegations of murder against Mr Simpson, Judge Ito wanted to be certain.