Home Top

'He is safe and happy, he did a good job': Family of hero British Airways pilot praise him for saving 157 passengers after he halted flaming 90mph jet in just NINE seconds on Vegas runway
Narcos at (Instagram) war! From guns and girls to big cats and big piles of cash, El Chapo's sons spark social media battles between Mexican cartel members showing off their sickening wealth
U.S. hostage Kayla Mueller had her fingernails pulled out before being repeatedly raped by ISIS leader: Yazidi sex slave reveals torment of aid worker's harrowing final months after she was forced to be the secret wife of Al-Baghdadi
Teen who was controversially jailed for having sex with a 14-year-old girl who lied about her age could be taken off the sex-offender list
Caitlyn Jenner breaks her silence about fatal car crash and voices her fears over being sent to Men's County Jail while revealing she does not regret transitioning
Erin Brockovich claims EPA 'lied about millions and millions of gallons of toxic water' which spilled into rivers last month
Pastor and seminary teacher who was outed as an Ashley Madison 'cheater' commits suicide because he carried too much 'shame'
Nick Gordon denies causing 'wrongful death' of Bobbi Kristina and insists he tried to give her CPR
Why you want to grow older in Switzerland...but not South Africa: Report ranks world governments according to how they're coping with ageing populations
What the globe REALLY looks like: Interactive map reveals how traditional atlases have got it wrong - and how the US, India and China can ALL fit inside Africa
Hillary gets her groove on for Ellen as she joins Pink and Amy Schumer on the chat show in first of major media appearances
Jeb Bush uses 'Late Show with Stephen Colbert' appearance to promise civility in Washington while Donald Trump continues to troll him
Now Hillary APOLOGIZES for email lapses and says 'That was a mistake, I'm sorry about that, I take responsibility' - just days after refusing to fall on her sword
Carly Fiorina thumps Trump for being too nice to Democratic front-runner and says he should 'throw a little more heat Hillary Clinton's way'
Hungarian camerawoman is fired after deliberately TRIPPING migrants fleeing police - including a father carrying his terrified young child
Syrian refugees have turned Greek island Lesbos into a war zone, residents claim, amid fears ISIS is using the crisis to enter Europe
Lilas, 2, suffered horrific burns at the hands of Assad's bombs in Syria. Now she is among thousands of starving migrants trapped on Greek island
'Europe cannot house all the misery in the world': EU chief pledges to tighten borders but warns continent must help those fleeing ISIS
White House says it's 'actively considering' new measures to help Syrian refugees - but won't say if more migrants will be allowed into the US
ISIS kidnaps 127 children in Mosul intending to turn them into blood-thirsty killers
The long, hard road to Budapest: Why hundreds of migrants are fleeing police and trying to march 110 miles to the Hungarian capital in the desperate hope of reaching Western Europe
Heart-warming moment a German toddler handed her sweets to a refugee girl who had just arrived in her country
Was NASA scientist spying for China? FBI investigate after professor who worked on Mars project mysteriously resigns and leaves the U.S. amid concerns he leaked defense secrets
Revealed: Spygate was far worse than first thought as Patriots staff 'stole playbooks from rival teams and Roger Goodell helped them to cover it up'

The Tomb Raider seemed at home among the peers. Well, she is used to ancient relics: QUENTIN LETTS sees Angelina Jolie in the House of Lords

Published: 18:26 EST, 8 September 2015 | Updated: 21:53 EST, 8 September 2015

View
comments

Alabaster ankles, a raised brow from which tumbled the inkiest hair, and two hands uncommonly slender; these last she clasped, a portrait of prayerful poise, until she employed them to gesticulate with slow sweeps through the air, as though stirring custard.

Angelina Jolie was giving evidence to a temporary House of Lords select committee on sexual violence in conflict.

Cue a bubble of excitement in the committee corridor. This was a ticket-only event, with police and tailcoated ushers in attendance.

Scroll down for video

Angelina Jolie giving evidence to a temporary House of Lords select committee on sexual violence in conflict

Ms Jolie-Pitt explained that rape has become an all-too-political instrument of war as she appeared before the committee

George Osborne wandered past to give evidence to an economic committee next door.

He saw the throng for Angelina and realised that he would be playing to a near-empty house. ‘I know my place,’ said the Chancellor.

She was listed on the order paper as Ms Angelina Jolie Pitt, special envoy of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees and co-founder of the PSVI. The PSVI is an anti-rape group created by William Hague when he was Foreign Secretary.

The soon-to-be Lord Hague, who gave evidence alongside Ms Jolie yesterday, has been teased about his association with her. People have said he was star-struck. A shallow view.

As he and his entirely admirable companion explained, rape has become an all-too-political instrument of war.

The committee was chaired by Lady (Emma) Nicholson, the one-time Tory MP who fled to the Lib Dems in the 1990s. Bet she regrets that now! Mind you, she extracted a peerage from her defection.

Gosh, she’s grand, Milady Nicholson. I bet Angelina J has not been patronised to quite such a degree since she left school. Think Lady Thatcher/the Dowager Countess of Grantham with a soupcon of Thora Hird. Also on the committee: the EU’s Lord Hannay, tanned like a ginger nut, and Glenys Kinnock, who (amazingly) is even windier than her husband. The Bishop of Derby, alas, was a no-show, depriving us of jokes about the bishop and the actress.

A-lister, Ms Jolie, spoke expertly, with melodrama, about the victims of sexual violence

Ms Jolie, star of Tomb Raider, seemed at home among the peers, as well she might. Her character in that production was ace with ancient relics.

The committee listened with respect to Mr Hague and another witness, Lady Helic (remarkable in her own right as an emigre of Bosnia-Herzegovina).

But it was the A-list star who drew their gazes. Lord Hannay essayed a look of worldly ennui but one sensed he had not been this feverish since he saw the preliminary draft of the Lisbon Treaty.

Her diction at first was a little disappointing for so prominent a thesp’.

Projection, dear! Soon she picked up the acoustics and we heard her more clearly.

More from Quentin Letts for the Daily Mail...

The public was sitting behind her but craning from a side-angle I copped the occasional view of giraffe-ish eyelashes.

Her skin was almost freakishly pale. A ring on one finger was the size of a billiard ball.

She spoke expertly, without melodrama, about victims of sexual violence she had met: a little girl in some benighted war zone who had rocked to and fro, weeping, brutalised.

‘I felt absolutely helpless,’ said Ms Jolie Pitt, her delivery nicely spare.

Mr Hague argued that this was a legitimate area for Foreign Office involvement: rape was used to make reconciliation in war zones harder, and to increase terror which increased the flow of refugees.

Rape is a tool of ethnic cleansing. It went unsaid – though is surely true, and no less legitimate an aim – that Christendom’s championing of women’s rights is a poke in the eye for chauvinist militant Islam and its more thuggish regimes.

The most powerful moment was when Ms Jolie Pitt flung wide her arms and asked us to imagine what we would do if women in our own families were raped.

It was done with a flourish no politician quite would have attempted and showed why she has been so strong in this role.

And as it finished, and she prepared to exit: a small, theatrical bow to the audience.