Spectator articles from April 2004

Spectator archives from April 2004

Portrait of the week.
April 3, 2004... Seven hundred police made 24 simultaneous raids around London, seizing half a ton of ammonium nitrate fertiliser in Hanwell, west London, arresting two men in Uxbridge, one in Ilford, one in Horley, one in Slough and three in Crawley--all...

We are not at war.
April 3, 2004... As day broke on 11 May 1941, Londoners could survey the devastation wrought by 100,000 incendiary bombs. Whole streets had been razed. More than 1,400 Londoners had been killed; many thousands more were lying terribly injured beneath the...

Diary.
April 3, 2004... Has any prime minister been quite so insulated from Parliament and Cabinet? Blair's solo performance last week, as he flew from Madrid to Libya to Brussels with his plane-load of captive journalists, was another reminder of how far Britain's...

It is hard to exaggerate the scale of the immigration crisis that now faces Tony Blair.(Politics)
April 3, 2004... After the 2001 general election massacre, a consensus swiftly established itself in the Conservative party. William Hague had fought on the wrong issues. Instead of Europe and asylum, his chosen battlegrounds, he should have championed health...

This is not the time to knock the BBC, but it should carry more news from Europe.(Media Studies)
April 3, 2004... After the Hutton inquiry all fair-minded people should rally to the BBC. It is true that over the years the Corporation has sometimes displayed a bias in favour of New Labour. I remember, for example, how after Peter Mandelson was ejected from...

More destructive than the Luftwaffe: John Prescott is going to destroy large areas of England with new homes, even though more than 700,000 properties--enough to meet housing needs for the next four years--lie vacant. Rod Liddle urges conservatives to resist the terror.(Cover Story)
April 3, 2004... According to our government, there is a shortage of affordable housing in this country, and particularly in the south of England. As a result the government, in the redoubtable, if humorous, figure of John Prescott, intends to build hundreds of...

Prepare for an October surprise: Bruce Anderson says that embarrassments over the European constitution may force Tony Blair to call an early election.
April 3, 2004... For nearly seven years, Tony Blair's caution was the Europhiles' despair. They wanted him to make the case for Europe and exploit his hold over public opinion. Their confidence exceeded his. Mr Blair was not prepared to take electoral risks for...

The Blairs.
April 3, 2004... HE'S BEEN LIKE THAT EVER SINCE HE MET CADDAFI HERE, WITH A LOAF OF BREAD BENEATH THE BOUGH, A FLSK OF WINE AND THOU, THE WILDERNESS IS PARADISE NOW

Return of the Dark Ages: Harry Mount laments the passing of an age when children had to recite Greek verbs before breakfast.
April 3, 2004... Whatever you might think of The Passion of The Christ, at least Mel Gibson tried with the Latin. There aren't many films with a credit for 'Theological Consulting and Aramaic/Latin Translation', and Dr William J. Fulco, the Jesuit priest...

Mind your language.
April 3, 2004... The Metropolitan Police have put up big posters on the Underground telling people what to do if they see a bag without an owner. 'Don't touch, check with other passengers, inform station staff or call 999,' it says. You might think that I am...

Some luvvies will believe anything: Brendan O'Neill is not as convinced as the Redgraves are by the tales of torture told by Guantanamo's freed British prisoners.
April 3, 2004... None of us knows for certain what goes on inside the cages of Camp X-Ray and the metal cellblocks of Camp Delta in Guantanamo Bay, where 600 suspected al-Qa'eda and Taleban fighters lifted from Afghanistan have spent the past two years. The...

Listed runways: Ross Clark warns that new rules on listed buildings could make it easier for the government to pull down ancient churches that stand in the way of airport extensions.
April 3, 2004... I have never had much confidence in heritage legislation since I discovered that I would need to seek permission to have a row of leylandii trees in my garden felled. This, not long after the Highways Agency's bulldozers had torn their way...

Ancient & modern.
April 3, 2004... Philip Pullman, author of the apparently anti-Christian His Dark Materials, and the Archbishop of Canterbury debated the significance of religion, and both enthusiastically agreed that 'myth' was an important feature of it. But why? The...

Kosovo goes to hell: Tom Walker says that Tony Blair is too busy doing global management to bother much about the consequences of Nato's humanitarian intervention in the Balkans.
April 3, 2004... From the kitchen balcony of our old flat in Pristina, we used to look out on a rubbish dump in the foreground, then the precipitous and rutted Plevljanska Street, and across that to the old Orthodox church of St Nikola. To the right of our flat...

All levelled like a desert: David Lovibond is filled with sadness as he visits the wrecked landscapes that inspired a poet who loved old England and hated rich developers.
April 3, 2004... Inclosure like a Bonaparte let not a thing remain, It levelled every bush and tree and levelled every hill And hung the moles for traitors--though the brook is running still, It runs 3 naked brook, cold...

Don't reason with this mule, Governor--just hit it over the head.(City And Suburban)
April 3, 2004... I have a question for the Bank of England's monetary policy committee: how do you attract a Missouri mule's attention? When the economists have quite worked out their answers, I can tell them: you hit it over the head with a length of...

The lone defender.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
April 3, 2004... From Stuart Millson Sir: I was disappointed to read that the government's programme of creeping republicanism--the removal of the Crown from Treasury notepaper, the police force dropping its oath of allegiance to the Queen etc.--is just...

A political animal.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
April 3, 2004... From Chris Patten Sir: Frank Johnson (Shared opinion, 20 March) comments on my principal reason for not wishing to be considered as a candidate for the chairmanship of the BBC--namely, a reluctance to take a vow of 'omerta' on leaving...

A place in the sun.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
April 3, 2004... From Toby Young Sir: I feel some sympathy for Sheridan Morley (Letters, 27 March). Like him, I've been sacked from numerous journalistic posts and I've always had a very low opinion of my successors. Not only has he had to suffer the...

Evolution is only a theory.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
April 3, 2004... From Angus Watson Sir: In your 20 March issue Andrew Kenny misses the point in the argument against Darwinism ('Down with superstition'). To question evolution theory on the one hand does not necessarily mean one is thumping a Bible with...

Smug papists.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
April 3, 2004... From Sheila Donaldson Sir: Obviously he doesn't realise it, but P.J. Kavanagh's review of The Catholic Revival in English Literature (Books, 20 March) reflects all the smug offensiveness of papists, particularly the converted variety,...

Devil in the detail.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
April 3, 2004... From Gerald Hitman Sir: I am intrigued that a man as able as Jeremy Clarke should have been unable to help Nick Griffin with a working definition of racism ('Britain's most reviled man', 27 March). Surely to goodness it is the act of...

Pseudo-liberal justice.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
April 3, 2004... From David M. Benda Sir: That the likes of Peter Oborne should see a moral equivalence between the assassination of a vile terrorist and the killing of innocent civilians in a suicide attack no longer shocks (Politics, 27 March). His on...

Fear itself.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
April 3, 2004... From Patrick Corden Sir: Following the Spanish bomb outrage, which had not occurred at the time of the writing/publication of Simon Jenkins's 13 March cover story on Mr Blair's recent speech, and Rod Liddle's interesting piece on scare...

Books furnish a room, but libraries can be a menace.(And Another Thing)
April 3, 2004... I have been given a superb Thames & Hudson book, The Most Beautiful Libraries in the World, and browsing through it has prompted thoughts on this difficult subject. All libraries pose insuperable problems, of acquisition, purpose, storage and...

The neocons have been making mischief for more than 100 years.(Shared Opinion)
April 3, 2004... What books, if any, important politicians read, as well as being of itself interesting, could also influence how they rule. In the late 1940s, it became known that both the prime minister, Attlee, and the opposition leader, Churchill, had...

Chunnel vision: have a toehold in both Paris and London.(Property)
April 3, 2004... The other day, a good friend asked me where he should look for a property investment. He has a gain that must be rolled back into property within the coming year to escape demands from the Inland Revenue, but nothing so far had seemed quite...

Compromise county.(Wiltshire)
April 3, 2004... Until 1994 we lived in Surrey. 'Surrey's not a county,' an Eton beak pointed out to my son. 'It's a suburb!' So, a writer-wife with no ties to London and a house-husband (me) and two prep-school-age children moved away from Dorking (30 minutes...

Bargain basements.(Living cheaply)
April 3, 2004... The most alarming aspect of living in London, for many people, is the extortionate cost of renting or buying somewhere to live. On the open market, it is difficult to rent a room anywhere for less than 70 [pounds sterling] a week, or to buy a...

Grand designs.(Listed buildings)
April 3, 2004... Unless you want to break the law, incur a substantial fine or, even worse, a prison sentence, you must be very cautious about trying to improve your home. Property development is big business, but even if planning permission has been granted it...

A leading light amidst the gloom.(Flourishing Letters 1928-1946)(Book Review)
April 3, 2004... FLOURISHING: LETTERS 1928-1946 by Isaiah Berlin, edited by Henry Hardy Chatto, 30 [pounds sterling], pp. 755, ISBN 070117420X Isaiah Berlin was a much-loved friend and a dominant influence on my thinking as an historian. His death in 1997...

All his world a stage.(Gielgud's Letters)(Book Review)
April 3, 2004... GIELGUD'S LETTERS edited by Richard Mangan Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 20 [pounds sterling], pp. 564, ISBN 0297829890 As in the theatre, so in his letters: John Gielgud was a man of many parts, and acutely aware of his audience for all of them....

The Catholic Cheshire Cat.(In Search Of A Beginning: My Life With Graham Greene)(Book Review)
April 3, 2004... IN SEARCH OF A BEGINNING: MY LIFE WITH GRAHAM GREENE by Yvonne Cloetta, as told to Marie-Francoise Allain, translated from the French by Euan Cameron Bloomsbury, 16.99 [pounds sterling], pp. 209, ISBN 0747571082 Yvonne Cloetta, the French...

Press Release from Plato.(Brief Article)(Poem)
April 3, 2004... Press Release from Plato Delayed until the sacred ship got back From Delos, the last hour of Socrates Unfolded smoothly. His time-honoured knack For putting everybody at their ease Was still there even while the...

The hard school of education.(I'm A Teacher, Get Me Out Of Here)(Book Review)
April 3, 2004... I'M A TEACHER, GET ME OUT OF HERE by Francis Gilbert Short Books, 9.99 [pounds sterling], pp. 207, ISBN 1904095682 My only experience of a tough inner-city school was on teaching practice in 1959. With three or four other students I was...

Swedish exercises in crime.(Firewall)(Book Review)
April 3, 2004... FIREWALL by Henning Mankell Harvill, 14.99 [pounds sterling], pp. 422, ISBN 1843431122 Henning Mankell, the Swedish crimewriter who is the creator of Inspector Kurt Wallender, is being taken increasingly seriously: an international...

Taste and passion--with a dash of luck.(The Devonshire Inheritance: Five Centuries Of Collecting At Chatsworth)(Book Review)
April 3, 2004... THE DEVONSHIRE INHERITANCE: FIVE CENTURIES OF COLLECTING AT CHATSWORTH by Nicolas Barker Art Services International, 40 [pounds sterling], pp. 431, ISBN 0883971380, available from Heywood Hill, 10 Curzon Street, London W1J 5HH Producers of...

Sixth son of Himself.(Rathcormick: A Childhood Recalled)(Book Review)
April 3, 2004... RATHCORMICK: A CHILDHOOD RECALLED by Homan Potterton Vintage, 7.99 [pounds sterling], pp. 303, ISBN 009946179X Have we had enough Irish childhoods lackadaisical days remote from English stresses, charming eccentrics, amusing turns of...

God as a Good Thing?(A Case For Religion)(Book Review)
April 3, 2004... A CASE FOR RELIGION by Keith Ward Oneworld Publications, 185 Banbury Road, Oxford OX2 7AR, Tel: 01865 310597, 16.99 [pounds sterling], pp. 246, ISBN 1851683372 This is a brave moment in history to be making a case for religion. Looking...

Old Baghdad in Hertfordshire.(The Cambridge Dictionary Of English Place Names)(Book Review)
April 3, 2004... THE CAMBRIDGE DICTIONARY OF ENGLISH PLACE NAMES edited by Victor Watts CUP, 175 [pounds sterling], pp. 713, ISBN 0521362091 Who would have thought of Harrow as 'the heathen temple' or suburban Penge as Celtic pen ced, 'head of the wood'?...

Music has charms to soothe a savage breast.(Shostakovich And Stalin: The Extraordinary Relationship Between The Great Composer And The Brutal Dictator)(Cold Peace: Stalin And The Soviet Ruling Circle 1945-1953)(Book Review)
April 3, 2004... SHOSTAKOVICH AND STALIN: THE EXTRAORDINARY RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN THE GREAT COMPOSER AND THE BRUTAL DICTATOR by Solomon Volkov Little, Brown, 14.99 [pounds sterling], pp. 370, ISBN 0316861413 COLD PEACE: STALIN AND THE SOVIET RULING CIRCLE...

Some moaning at the Bar.(My Brief Career: The Trials Of A Young Lawyer)(Book Review)
April 3, 2004... MY BRIEF CAREER: THE TRIALS OF A YOUNG LAWYER by Harry Mount Short Books, 9.99 [pounds sterling], pp. 170, ISBN 1904095690 This is a sad little story of the author s annus horribilis as a pupil barrister in the late Nineties. Today the Bar...

Invitation.
April 3, 2004... (After Catullus: Carmen XIII, c. 50 BC) Dear Fabullus, You will dine well at my place this coming weekend, if our stars stay lucky, provided you bring with you the wherewithal of a good menu, bring also the bottles, salt up your jokes...

An unanswered SOS from the SAS.(Soldier Five)(Book Review)
April 3, 2004... SOLDIER FIVE by Mike Coburn Mainstream, 17.99 [pounds sterling], pp. 316, ISBN 1840188669 The epic survival story of the SAS patrol known as Bravo Two Zero during the first Gulf war until now, has largely overshadowed a darker story of...

Heirs and graces.(Snobs)(Book Review)
April 3, 2004... SNOBS by Julian Fellowes Weidenfeld, 12.99 [pounds sterling], pp. 265, ISBN 0297848763 This provocative, titillating and seductive novel is about upperclass affectations and the mystery of unearned greatness'. It focuses on a network of...

A new infatuation: Peter Phillips explains how he has become doubly obsessed: with film as well as music.(Arts)
April 3, 2004... Have you ever rubbed shoulders with musicians and thought them dull--because they are obsessed with one thing, which doesn't include you and which is all they think about? Ever noticed how musicians don't really talk to each other in a properly...

Visual edification.
April 3, 2004... Heaven on Earth: Art from Islamic Lands The Hermitage Rooms, Somerset House. Courtauld Institute of Art, until 22 August Another successful exhibition at the Hermitage Rooms. Hot on the heels of Caspar David Friedrich and Rubens comes this...

Multi tasker.
April 3, 2004... Jean Arp: L'invention de la forme Palais des Beaux-Arts, Brussels, until 6 June Brussels, with its faintly schizophrenic bilingual culture, seems the perfect location for a major Arp retrospective. Hans (Jean) Arp was born in 1886 in...

Incest is best.(Festen at the Almeida)(The Dark at the Donmar)(Hurricane at the Arts)(Theater Review)
April 3, 2004... Festen Almeida The Dark Donmar Hurricane Arts At last, a good play! Festen, a stage adaptation of the Danish film of the same name, is among the two or three best things I've seen this year. So far, every performance has ended up...

Handel and drama.(Opera Review)
April 3, 2004... Sosarme Royal College of Music Vanda Bloomsbury Theatre For four out of every five Handel operas I see I do my best to persuade myself of and report on their dramatic cogency, however unapparent; their ceaseless flow of melody, even if...

South African riches.(Gardens)
April 3, 2004... When I was a child, I pestered my mother to take us to Longleat. In the end she agreed, pleased perhaps to think that I was developing a precocious interest in Elizabethan architecture. In fact, I had longed--oh, easily for weeks--to see the...

Baffling conundrum.(Radio)
April 3, 2004... More than a year after the war against Iraq was launched, the World Service and Radio Four have been broadcasting programmes about the extraordinary diplomacy engaged in by the United States and Britain to gain United Nations approval. On the...

Fighting shy.(Television)(I Met Osama bin Laden)(Television Program Review)
April 3, 2004... Shy people are evil. I can count on the fingers of one hand the number of shy people I actually like. Mostly I agree with my (shy) friend Hugh Massingberd's housemaster who once told him that 'shyness is just a form of rudeness'. It's not...

Drivel and bilge.(High life)
April 3, 2004... New York My house is being renovated by a team of Chinese men who speak no English and who smoke non-stop. I suppose people do not say good morning in China, or perhaps it's just me they've not taken a shine to. It's a creepy feeling. I...

Keeping fit.(Low life)
April 3, 2004... Both of our upright vacuum cleaners broke down last week. I found a repair shop in Yellow Pages and took them along, and who should be behind the counter but Barry, my karate sensei. As well as being a friend, as my karate sensei Barry is also...

Tipping dilemma.(Singular life)
April 3, 2004... Why do we tip taxi-drivers? I mean why do we really? We don't tip train-drivers, or bus-drivers, or minicab-drivers of airline pilots. So why do we always fumble in our bags, as the fat man in the front scat looks threatening, to give him some...

Mixed fortunes.(Bridge)
April 3, 2004... THE brilliant and caustic bridge player Brian Senior confessed to me recently that he finds Mixed Pairs tournaments the easiest to win because there's such an atmosphere of mistrust between partners. When I asked why this should be, he replied...

Misha v. Bobby.(Chess)
April 3, 2004... My occasional series on matches that never took place continues to arouse interest. A fabulous clash would have been that between those two uncompromising warriors of the chessboard, Misha Tal and Bobby Fischer. Both of them were renowned for...

Highbury high.(Spectator Sport)
April 3, 2004... It is a relief, I suppose, that the most momentous English football fixture so far this year does not feature Manchester United. Next Tuesday at Highbury, Arsenal and Chelsea play the second leg of the European Champions Cup quarter-final. It...

Dear Mary.(Your Problems Solved)
April 3, 2004... Several friends living overseas have indicated that they will be coming to England this summer and that they would like to pay us a visit. However, since seeing them last, these friends have produced a number of infants and they seem to labour...

Portrait of the week.
April 10, 2004... After the resignation of Miss Beverley Hughes as immigration minister, Mr Tony Blair, the Prime Minister, called a 'summit' at Downing Street to plan a 'cross-government assault' on failures in the system; MI5 was called in. It had been...

Democracy can wait.
April 10, 2004... In ten months' time, according to America's timetable for the handover of power, Iraqis will be going to the polls. Men and women with large rosettes and wide grins will be walking the streets, kissing babies and expounding on their plans for...

Diary.
April 10, 2004... I gave up smoking 11 months ago. It had reached the point where I had come to regard eating as an inconvenient interruption to smoking. People keep asking me if I feel any better but I don't really. I have a permanent cold, excessive catarrh, I...

The Prime Minister is emerging as a serial bungler on an epic scale.(Politics)
April 10, 2004... The longer they stay in power, the more prime ministers lose their political touch. This seems to be an unbreakable rule, and Tony Blair is emphatically not an exception. For most prime ministers, however, there is an important compensation....

The Spectator's notes.
April 10, 2004... At the weekend, one of the more lurid Sabbath newspapers published claims, duly denied, that David Beckham indulged in (to use the technical jargon) torrid sex-romps with his sultry 26-year-old personal assistant, public-school-educated Rebecca...

The government's contempt for liberty: identity cards threaten law-abiding citizens more than they threaten terrorists, says Peter Hitchens. Their introduction would signal the end of privacy--and of England.(Cover Story)
April 10, 2004... The arguments in favour of identity cards are empty and false. The Prime Minister says there are no civil liberty issues involved in their introduction, when he means that nobody in his gutless Cabinet is prepared to put up a principled fight...

The Blairs.
April 10, 2004... ANYWAY, WE NEED CHEAP LABOUR HERE, TO DO THE JOBS OUR PEOPLE WON'T DO [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Mind your language.
April 10, 2004... 'It's all Greek to me,' said my husband, putting down his whisky glass, which was not wet but might have been, on the cover of Liddell and Scott. 'Oh, darling,' I said, snatching it up and restoring it to a 'Guinness is good for you' mat next...

If it's war you want, vote Kerry: John Laughland shows that the Democratic contender is more hawkish than Bush, and may appeal to the neocons this November.
April 10, 2004... As the Bush administration comes under increasing fire for its decision to attack Iraq, the Democratic contender, John F. Kerry, is profiting from his perceived status as a critic of Bush's foreign policy. A patrician grandee with a pleasing...

How ID cards can liberate us: Sir John Stevens, the Metropolitan Police commissioner, talks to Simon Heffer about the fight against terrorism.(Interview)
April 10, 2004... On 11 September 2001 Sir John Stevens, commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, was on an aircraft heading for America. He was about to meet his counterpart in the FBI for talks about combating organised crime. Instead, crime organised on a...

Passion fashion: Justin Marozzi has noticed that politicians, bankers and computer people are all 'passionate' about their policies and products.
April 10, 2004... 'Passion, I see, is catching,' Antony remarks in Julius Caesar; and now everyone seems to be going down with it. Politicians, banks, telecoms and travel companies, public relations firms, insurers, magazine subeditors, even the Co-op, never...

Ancient & modern.
April 10, 2004... American interventions in the Middle East have led many commentators to regard the USA as a new imperial power. But there are many ways to control an empire, as the Romans knew. It is automatically assumed that Rome controlled its empire...

The real racists: David Lovibond on why he is angry with the multiculturalists, who make colour, not culture, the measure of all things.
April 10, 2004... It might have been the news that net foreign immigration had reached 245,000 a year, or Beverley Hughes's shameful economies with the truth about Romanian roof-tilers, or David Blunkett's manipulation of asylum-seeker numbers. Perhaps it was...

When poets aroused suspicion by studying the time of a mountain stream.(And Another Thing)
April 10, 2004... When I go down to my house in the Quantocks, the first thing I do in Nether Stowey, even before I buy the West Somerset Free Press, paragon of local newspapers, is to inspect the stream that flows through the little town. Coleridge called it...

The US is bringing liberty and equality to Iraq, but not fraternity: that would be sexist.(Another Voice)
April 10, 2004... Inside Baghdad there is another Baghdad. It is called the Green Zone and my Times colleague Richard Beeston wrote about it in The Spectator a few weeks ago. I visited the Green Zone last month. This was virtual reality. Outside lies a dirty and...

Tackling the housing crisis.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
April 10, 2004... From The Rt Hon. John Prescott, MP Sir: Rod Liddle ('More destructive than the Luftwaffe', 3 April) told only part of the story on housing in this case. More than hall the UK's 700,000 empty properties are houses that are either being...

Shredder evidence.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
April 10, 2004... Sir: Brendan O'Neill ('Not a shred of evidence', 21 February) raised serious allegations that I had made 'uncorroborated and quite amazing claims' about the use of a shredder as a method of execution in Saddam Hussein's prisons. For seven...

Contractual benefits.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
April 10, 2004... Sir: The similarity between America's neo-cons today and our own imperialists a century ago is even closer than Frank Johnson suggests (Shared opinion, 3 April). Joseph Chamberlain, like Dick Cheney, was closely associated with firms that were...

Saviour of the French.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
April 10, 2004... Sir: As Admiral Sir Bertram Ramsay, who directed the Dunkirk evacuation, Operation Dynamo, was my father, I was interested In read Nigel Buxton's article ('Dunkirk spirits', 6 March). He wrote of 'a cruel necessity that compelled Admiral Ramsay...

Not just for Rupert.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
April 10, 2004... Sir: Stephen Glover's column (Media studies, 27 March) about Michael Howard's speech to a News International conference in Cancun contained a number of inaccuracies. Mr Glover said that Michael Howard had made remarks about the Spanish election...

In denial.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
April 10, 2004... Sir: Jeremy Clarke ('Britain's most reviled man', 27 Match) did not mention that Nick Griffin, the BNP leader, is a Holocaust denier. When David Irving lost his libel case against Deborah Lipstadt in 2000, Mr Griffin accused him of being 'too...

Wong chancellor.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
April 10, 2004... Sir: Ross Clark ('The only good tax is a death tax', 27 March) unjustly maligns James Callaghan. It was not Callaghan but that famous 'modewate', Roy Jenkins, who in his first budget as chancellor, in March 1968, hit unsuspecting taxpayers with...

Is peace breaking out?(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
April 10, 2004... Sir: Given that Toby Young and I have not been the closest of friends (and for that I admit I am half-responsible), I was enchanted by his thoughtful letter last week (3 April). I know well, as Noel's literary executor and authorised...

Why I can't bring myself to join in the national rejoicing over Michael Grade.(Media Studies)
April 10, 2004... Michael Grade's appointment as the new chairman of the BBC has won universal praise from every quarter. Tessa Jowell, the Culture Secretary, and Julie Kirkbride, her Tory shadow, both like him. The editors of the Daily Express and the Financial...