Contemporary Review articles from August 2000

Contemporary Review archives from August 2000

SADDAM -- 'FATHER OF VICTORIES?'.
August 1, 2000... SADDAM is a nondescript brown terrier, predominantly Airedale, owned by M. Roland Turpin who, with his brother, runs the local sawmill. He was named after the 'Father of Victories' because he was born as the latter's army launched itself into...

THE SHAKERS AT THE MILLENNIUM.
August 1, 2000... AS early as 1797 one US newspaper reported the Shakers as a religious community that was 'dead and dying'. The end of the Shakers has been reported since in various media and on numerous occasions, leading many to believe that Shaker dwells...

TAJIKISTAN'S TRANSITION TO THE WORLD ECONOMY.
August 1, 2000... THE struggle for political equality, societal justice and human rights constitute the fundamental aspect of transition in the newly independent republics in Central Asia in the post-Soviet era. This struggle has been more severe in Tajikistan...

VIOLENCE AMONG JAPANESE YOUTH.
August 1, 2000... RECENTLY the British Heart Foundation published a leaflet, Get Kids on the Go, in which parents were advised to encourage their children to get more exercise. The Foundation has also emphasised the alarming decline in physical activity since...

THE MAKING OF A CONSERVATIVE: PART ONE.
August 1, 2000... TONY Blair and other outspoken exponents of his 'New Labour' government have unleashed numerous attacks upon the 'Forces of conservatism'. In May they began a crusade to depict conservatives as products of public school and Oxbridge...

THE HOLOCAUST EXHIBITION.(Brief Article)
August 1, 2000... 'Where one burns books, one will, in the end, burn people'. THIS comment by the German Jewish poet Heinrich Heine (1797-1856) serves as a perfect preface to the long overdue Holocaust Exhibition at the Imperial War Museum which was...

QUALITY OF LIFE.(Poem)
August 1, 2000... I have lived a life -- or two, depending where the line is drawn. What has been accomplished is, as if it were, undone, and what remains undone is the heel that kicks the spur. Life, time, accomplishment define...

FROM THE HOLBEIN'S TO CRANACH: PICTURES FROM BASEL AT THE NATIONAL GALLERY.
August 1, 2000... THE respect which the National Gallery has won abroad was confirmed in 1997, when the Copenhagen Museum for Kunst sent its best Cranachs there during its renovation. Now the Basel Kunstsammlung, also under reconstruction, has placed fifteen of...

GIELGUD'S HAMLET.
August 1, 2000... There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy. (1.5.166-67) THIS is one of those hackneyed quotations that Hamlet, famously, is full of: but what does it mean? Everything depends on the stress,...

RICHARD ADAMS AT EIGHTY.
August 1, 2000... RICHARD Adams, who has just celebrated his eightieth birthday, can look back on a remarkable life where fame arrived unexpectedly at the age of 52. There had been little to forecast this during the anonymous years of public school, wartime...

H.M. TREASURY FROM THE INSIDE.(Review)
August 1, 2000... The Secret Treasury: How Britain's Economy is Really Run. David Lipsey. Viking. [pound]20.00. 263 pages. ISBN 0-670-88926-1. At any major inter-Departmental meeting in Whitehall, you may observe a figure, never in the chair but sitting...

THE WORLD'S OLDEST LIVING FISH.(Review)
August 1, 2000... A Fish Caught in Time: The Search for the Coelocanth. Samantha Weinberg. Fourth Estate. [pound]13.99. 239 pages. ISBN 1-85702-906-2. The angler's tale to end all anglers' tales, that of the fish 'caught in time', as the title neatly puts...

WHAT NEXT FOR SCOTLAND?(Review)
August 1, 2000... After Britain: New Labour and the Return of Scotland. Tom Nairn. Granta Books. [pound]15.99. 324 pages. ISBN 1-86207-050-4. Tom Nairn claims to be 'a celebrated iconoclast of things British', cavalier in his style but not in his loyalties....

PURSUING POWER IN JAPAN.(Review)
August 1, 2000... The Pursuit of Power in Modern Japan 1825--1995. Chushichi Tsuzuki. Oxford University Press. [pounds]65.00. 550 pages. ISBN 0-19-820589-9. The Japanese have never been folk comfortable with asking questions, and only within recent years...

THE RACING MAN'S DIARIST.(Review)
August 1, 2000... The Journals of Woodrow Wyatt. Volume Two. Sarah Curtis, editor. Macmillan. [pounds]25.00. 734 pages. ISBN 0-333-77405-1. The best political diarists in British history -- one thinks of Wraxall, Greville, Chips Channon, Alan Clark and to a...

FALSE MESSIAHS.(Review)
August 1, 2000... The Devil's Party: a History of Charlatan Messiahs. Colin Wilson. Virgin Publishing. [pounds]17.99. 295 pages. ISBN 1-85227-843-9. Sex, violence, madness and religion constitute a heady, eye-catching quartet of topics. It is not difficult...

THAILAND'S KING BRUMIBOL.(Review)
August 1, 2000... The Revolutionary King: The True-Life Sequel to The King and I. William Stevenson. Constable. [pounds]20.00. 280 pages. ISBN 0-09-479450-2. The present Thai sovereign, Bhumibol, has reigned for more than fifty years, embodying the spirit...

ANDREW MARVELL: THE POET AND HIS WORLD.(Review)
August 1, 2000... World Enough and The Life of Andrew Marvell. Nicholas Murray. Little, Brown. o20.00. 294 pages. ISBN 0-316-64863-9. Incredibly, this is the first biography of Marvell since 1965 to lay claims to being definitive, or at least comprehensive....

DORIS LESSING AND HER UNWANTED BIOGRAPHY.(Review)
August 1, 2000... Doris Lessing: A Biography. Carole Klein. Duckworth. [pound]18.99. ISBN 0-7156-295-4. Beware the American academic who is determined to write your biography whether you wish it or not. Doris Lessing recently complained in The Spectator...

THE WORLD OF PAPERBACKS.(Brief Article)(Bibliography)
August 1, 2000... VERSO has published a paperback edition of Nick Cohen's Cruel Britannia: Reports on the Sinister and the Preposterous ([pound]10.00. 247 pages. ISBN 1-85984-288-7) in which The Observer journalist turns a libertarian eye on the Blair regime and...

Britain under Thatcher.(Review)(Brief Article)
August 1, 2000... Anthony Seldon and Daniel Collings. Longman. [pounds]7.99 p.b. 142 pages. ISBN 0-582-31714-2. This latest publication in Long-man's 'Seminar Studies in History' looks at the three administrations led by Margaret Thatcher, from 1979 to 1990. The...

An Intelligent Person's Guide to Classics.(Review)(Brief Article)
August 1, 2000... Peter Jones. Duckworth. [pounds]14.95. 176 pages. ISBN 0-7156-2866-6. The slow retreat of the Classics from the centre of British education is now almost complete. Yet the fascination of Greek and Latin, as languages and literatures, as well as...

Crimea: The Great Crimean War 1854-1856.(Review)(Brief Article)
August 1, 2000... Trevor Royle. Little, Brown and Company. [pounds]22.50. 564 pages. ISBN 0-316-64849-3. The author is that unusual combination, a newspaper man and a scholar and this combination makes his history of the Crimean War both interesting and...

Hypnerotomachia Poliphili: The Strife of Love in a Dream.(Review)(Brief Article)
August 1, 2000... Joscelyn Godwin, translator and editor. Thames and Hudson. [pounds]42.00. 476 pages. ISBN 0-500-01942-8. This lavishly and beautifully produced book, translated and edited by the Professor of Music at Colgate University, New York, was published...

The Routledge Historical Atlas of the American South.(Review)(Brief Article)
August 1, 2000... Andrew K. Frank. Routledge. [pound]40.00. 144 pages. ISBN 0-415-92135-X. The American Southland, stretching from Virginia on the mid-Atlantic coast, to Texas in the south-west, is a vast territory with a complicated history. In some parts --...

Teller of Tales: The Life of Arthur Conan Doyle.(Review)(Brief Article)
August 1, 2000... Daniell Stashower. Allen Lane: The Penguin Press. [pound]18.99. 472 pages. ISBN 0-713-99373-1. It is perhaps fitting that this biography was written by an American writer of mystery novels and first published in the U.S. because Conan Doyle's...

The Great Stink of London: Sir Joseph Bazalgette and the Cleansing of the Victorian Capital.(Review)(Brief Article)
August 1, 2000... Stephen Halliday. Sutton Publishing. [pound]19.99/US$36.95. 210 pages. ISBN 0-7509-1975-2. Books about sewers and road building may not be to everyone's taste but civilisation as we know it depends on clean water, functioning toilets and good...

The First Elizabeth.(Review)(Brief Article)
August 1, 2000... Carolly Erickson. Robson Books. [pound]17.95. 448 pages. ISBN 1-86105-182-4. Dr Erickson, who taught at Columbia University in New York City before turning to biography, is one of the best known biographers of 'the great and the good' -- or at...

Marcel Proust: A Life.(Review)(Brief Article)
August 1, 2000... William C. Carter. Yale University Press. [pound]22.50. 946 pages. ISBN 0-300-081145-6. It is appropriate that an author that wrote such long works should have such a long biography. In 807 pages of text Professor Carter turns the academic...

The Statecraft of British Imperialism: Essays in Honour of Win. Roger Louis.(Review)(Brief Article)
August 1, 2000... Robed D. King and Robin Kilson, editors. Frank Cass. [pound]17.50. 272 pages. ISBN 0-7146-4827-2. These fourteen essays in British Imperial history are in honour of the American scholar, Roger Louis, historian of the British Empire and, most...

The Search for Enlightenment: An Introduction to Eighteenth-Century French Writing.(Review)(Brief Article)
August 1, 2000... Duckworth. [pound]11.95 p.b. 176 pages. ISBN 0-7156-2839-9. This volume is part of Duckworth's highly praised series, 'Introductions to European Literature and Culture'. The author, who teaches in Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge, takes a...

The Victors. Eisenhower and His Boys: The Men of World War II.(Review)(Brief Article)
August 1, 2000... Stephen E. Ambrose. Simon & Schuster. [pounds]20.00. 396 pages. ISBN 0-684-85628-X. Mr Ambrose is widely recognised as one of the U.S.'s leading military historians and in this book he covers the period from D-Day (6 June 1944), when Allied...

The Daily Telegraph: Fifth Book of Obituaries. 20th-Century Lives.(Review)(Brief Article)
August 1, 2000... Hugh Massingberd, editor. Macmillan. [pounds]16.99. 505 pages. ISBN 0-333-74000-9. The Daily Telegraph's obituary page has become famous for having well rounded obituaries while the series in which this is published has become something of a...

The Quest for C: Mansfield Cuming and the Founding of the Secret Service.(Review)(Brief Article)
August 1, 2000... Alan Judd. HarperCollins. [pounds]19.99. 501 pages. ISBN 0-00-255901-3. Fortunate is the biographer whose subject kept a secret diary; even more fortunate is the biographer whose subject's diary may only be seen by himself. This is the position...

Who's Who in Europe 1450-1750.(Review)(Brief Article)
August 1, 2000... Henry Kamen, editor. Routledge. [pounds]19.99. 321 pages. ISBN 0-415-14727-1. This latest release from Routledge's 'Who's Who' series covers several of the greatest years in European history: the Renaissance, the Protestant Reformation, the...

Social Democracy and the Working Class in Nineteenth and Twentieth Century Germany.(Review)(Brief Article)
August 1, 2000... Stefan Berger. Longman. [pound]14.99. 280 pages. ISBN 0-582-29814-8. This volume begins Longman's new series, 'Themes in Modem German History'. Modem Germany's 'social democracy' has long been regarded by historians as one of the most...

Lord Salisbury: A Political Biography.(Review)(Brief Article)
August 1, 2000... David Steele. U.C.L. Press. [pound]40.00. 472 pages. ISBN 1-85728-326-0. Lord Salisbury earned his greatest fame as Foreign Secretary but his strongest appeal to modern historians was as political philosopher and trenchant writer. As Foreign...

The British Study of Politics in the Twentieth Century.(Review)(Brief Article)
August 1, 2000... Jack Hayward, Brian Barry and Archie Brown, editors. Oxford University Press. [pound]29.95. 511 pages. ISBN 0-19-726206-6. This book has been published by O.U.P. for the British Academy and is the brain-child of Professor Jack Hayward. Its aim...