Spectator articles from April 2008

Spectator archives from April 2008

The real immigration lie.
April 5, 2008... Yet again, New Labour's predilection for spin and misleading statistics has landed the government in trouble. Ministers have long been fond of making the argument for immigration on the basis that it increases the country's GDP. But as the...

Diary.
April 5, 2008... My dinner parties are an exercise in patience. People used to tell me how much money they'd made buying in Islington when they did. 'Good for you,' I'd say, hating them just a little. I've noticed that recently my friends have stopped telling...

Watch the Tories sidling up to the Lib Dems: the foundations for a post-election pact.(POLITICS)(Liberal Democratic party)
April 5, 2008... Now that Francis Maude is no longer lurking around Conservative headquarters dampening any high spirits he might encounter, bubbles of optimism are allowed to float with impunity around Team Cameron. For the last three weeks, the Tories have...

The Spectator's notes.
April 5, 2008... If Boris Johnson wins the contest to become Mayor of London on 1 May, he will not inherit an impartial civil service of the sort to which British national politicians are accustomed. There has only been one Mayor of London so far and he, Ken...

Diary of a Notting Hill nobody.
April 5, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] MONDAY Head buzzing from v important Economic Strategy meeting. Total reorganisation of our smoothie expenditure, with half the budget to be spent on bran muffins. Lot of discussion about whether we should issue...

Welcome to subprime Britain. How scared should you be? Mining data of unprecedented sophistication, George Bridges unveils a map of future economic pain: the areas where repossessions and negative equity are most likely to bite in the months ahead. The credit earthquake, he says, will be a huge factor in the next election.
April 5, 2008... When London radio news is being sponsored by a firm of bailiffs, you know something bad is happening. 'Helping landlords get what they're owed' runs the cheery slogan at the end of the bulletins. As bad as the financial headlines are, this...

A chance for the Lords to justify their existence: the EU's Lisbon Treaty was handled scandalously in the Commons, says Daniel Hannan. Now the Upper House has the chance to play its ancestral role as the conscience of the nation.
April 5, 2008... Like, I suspect, most Spectator readers, I saw no need for Lords reform in the first place. The old chamber functioned perfectly well, as even Labour was forced to admit. But the party took the view that, while it might work in practice, it...

Politicians boasting about the women they've slept with is not candour: it's spin: Rod Liddle says that Nick Clegg's toe-curling remarks are part of a deceitful tendency in the political class to tell us things about themselves that we don't want to know rather than speaking the truth about policy.(LIDDLE BRITAIN)
April 5, 2008... Another terrible night spent tossing and turning, racked with worry over whether or not I have ever had sex with Nick Clegg, the leader of the Liberal Democratic party. It is not something I remember doing and on the face of it, both of us...

Death of a Post Office.
April 5, 2008... They shut our Post Office yesterday. For the first time in living memory there is no early morning light in that end of the ancient cottage and the little shop that went with it. The stacks of newspapers and magazines with unlikely titles have...

Why hasn't Britain got a sovereign wealth fund? Martin Vander Weyer says that we resent the growing power of countries which shrewdly invest the wealth from their natural resources. We had North Sea oil, and we blew the lot.
April 5, 2008... Twenty years ago, when I ran the Hong Kong branch of a London investment bank, one of our most important London-based investor clients for Asian stocks was only ever referred to, in whispers, as 'Orange'. It operated--so I was told--behind...

Tatarstan is the Muslim girlfriend Putin locks up: Venetia Thompson dislikes the resignation she finds in the most quiescent of Russia's Muslim states. But other republics will be less apathetic in the face of Moscow's provocations.
April 5, 2008... Kazan, Tatarstan The 12-hour train journey from Moscow was a blur of vodka, of only visiting the bathroom in pairs for our own safety and, most frustratingly, of being told repeatedly to 'calm down' in Russian by our formidable escort,...

You'd think Prince Charles would approve of foie gras: Alexander Chancellor says that it is the sort of food which the Prince should like: free of chemicals and genetic manipulation, produced on small family farms, and steeped in tradition.
April 5, 2008... No foie gras was served at the banquet for Nicolas and Carla Sarkozy at Windsor Castle last week, which was hardly surprising, since the Prince of Wales, who was very much in evidence, had recently joined the swelling ranks of those who regard...

A child's needs.(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
April 5, 2008... Sir: I doubt the suggestion in your leading article (29 March) that clause 14(2)(b) of the government's Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill is a moral disgrace. The Bill breaks new ground in allowing two people of the same sex to be...

Less is more.(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
April 5, 2008... Sir: In The Spectator's Notes (29 March), Charles Moore condemns the phrase 'any time soon' on the grounds that the word 'soon' is sturdy enough to stand on its own. But his paragraph starts off with the phrase, 'More and more people'. Is...

Obama's snake-oil.(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
April 5, 2008... Sir: Matthew Parris (Another voice, 29 March) defends Barack Obama's speech on race very well. But surely we ought to resist the core of Mr Obama's case? The Reverend Wright said some horribly stupid things, and Mr Obama rightly distances...

Life and death issue.(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
April 5, 2008... Sir: May I be allowed a single comment on the gracious article concerning myself ('A holy man tipped to lead the nation's Catholics', 22 March)? Towards its end, in response to a question as to whether I would ever leave my monastery, I am...

Puzzlement and delight.(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
April 5, 2008... Sir: I read the article by David Selbourne ('We are living in a state of emergency', 29 March) with a mixture of delight and puzzlement; delight at the argument thereof--apart from the references to Cromwell, whose republican experiment ended...

A slow run thing.(LETTERS)(Brief article)
April 5, 2008... Sir: Henry Sands is quite wrong (Diary, 22 March) when he claims that his pal Mr Tolstoy recorded the slowest time of the season on the Cresta Run this year. A chap with a group from Krug champagne posted a time of 197 seconds; I witnessed it...

Taste the difference.(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
April 5, 2008... Sir: I was initially impressed by Charles Moore's son's theory regarding the position of our taste buds (The Spectator's Notes, 29 March), according to which canapes and open sandwiches are served the wrong way up. But as I have discovered...

Nick Clegg's sex confession shows why politicians should never try to look normal.(SHARED OPINION)
April 5, 2008... It was the 14 pints, I always thought, that ultimately did it for William Hague. That was the beginning of the end. There must have been teenagers out there in the 1970s who did, indeed, drink 14 pints a day. It's just that they probably...

When markets come crashing down, send for the man with the big red nose.(AND ANOTHER THING)
April 5, 2008... Too early yet to say whether the present financial turmoils will end in a catastrophic maelstrom or simply slip away like an angry tide, leaving puddles. One has no great confidence in the authorities on either side of the Atlantic. Would that...

Is Australia's economic luck about to run out? Tim Soutphommasane says Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, who is in London this weekend, inherited a boom but now faces threats from China, inflation and global downturn.(BUSINESS)
April 5, 2008... Australia's residents are fond of referring to the place as 'the lucky country' but most are blissfully unaware of the phrase's origins. 'Lucky' was never meant as a compliment. When the late Donald Horne, a giant of Australian intellectual...

A fundamental crisis of credibility: Simon Nixon says loss of authority at the Bank and the Treasury matter even more than the failings of the FSA.(FINANCIAL REGULATION)(Financial Services Authority)
April 5, 2008... During the boom years, it was fashionable to say that London owed its success as a financial centre partly to the quality of its regulation. Thanks to the Financial Services Authority's astonishing internal audit of its supervision of Northern...

A mask that eats the face.(The World Is What It Is)(Book review)
April 5, 2008... THE WORLD IS WHAT IT IS by Patrick French Macmillan, 20 [pounds sterling], pp. 400, ISBN 9780330433501 [telephone] 16 [pounds sterling] (plus 2.45 [pounds sterling] p&p) 0870 429 6655 A man whose personal life contains as many...

Flies on the wall.(I Wish I'd Been There)(Book review)
April 5, 2008... I WISH I'D BEEN THERE edited by Byron Holinshead and Theodore K. Rabb Macmillan, 20 [pounds sterling], pp. 456, ISBN 9780230528017 [telephone] 16 [pounds sterling] (plus 2.45 [pounds sterling p&p) 0870 429 6655 To invite 20...

Changing all utterly.(Watching the Door)(Book review)
April 5, 2008... WATCHING THE DOOR by Kevin Myers Atlantic Books, 14.99 [pounds sterling], pp. 274, ISBN 9781843547280 [telephone] 11.99 [pounds sterling] (plus 2.45 [pounds sterling] p&p) 0870 429 6655 This is a book so remarkable that after...

The Walk of a Friend.(Poem)
April 5, 2008... The Walk of a Friend 'The walk of a friend, the line of a melody, the healthy throbbing of a motor, are known when they are seen or heard.' Scott Buchanan: Poetry and Mathematics (1929) And so they are; and so combined, ...

Boys will be boys.(Sputnik Caledonia)(Book review)
April 5, 2008... SPUTNIK CALEDONIA by Andrew Crumey Picador, 7.99 [pounds sterling], pp. 553, ISBN 9780330448413 [telephone] 6.39 [pounds sterling] (plus 2.45 [pounds sterling], p&p) 0870 429 6655 Reading this novel I couldn't help but think...

Sounds of the Seventies.(The Northern Clemency)(Book review)
April 5, 2008... THE NORTHERN CLEMENCY by Philip Hensher Fourth Estate, 17.99 [pounds sterling], pp. 738, ISBN 9780007174799 [telephone] 14.39 [pounds sterling] (plus 2.45 [pounds sterling] p&p) 0870 429 6655 One of the difficult tasks when...

A subject in need of a writer.(LIFE & LETTERS)
April 5, 2008... 'Have you your next book in mind?' 'Not yet, I can't fix on a subject,' my friend replied. 'What about Ouida?' I said. Actually this exchange has taken place a couple of times, and on each occasion my suggestion was received without...

Liberating Shakespeare: Mary Wakefield talks to the RSC's Michael Boyd and learns how he scared the Establishment.(ARTS)(Interview)
April 5, 2008... Halfway through our interview, in the middle of a discussion about the future of the RSC, a tired Michael Boyd rubs his face with his hands, looks up at me through the gaps between his fingers and says, 'Well, my aim was, and still is, to knock...

Crowded out.
April 5, 2008... Cranach Royal Academy, until 8 June Friend of Martin Luther, and court painter to the Elector of Saxony (who was Luther's protector), Lucas Cranach the Elder (c.1472-1553) has been called the leading artist of the Reformation. He produced...

Two little boys.(Son of Rambow)(Movie review)
April 5, 2008... Son of Rambow 12A, nationwide Son of Rambow is the tale of two young boys--one from a strict religious background; the other a troubled troublemaker--who come together to shoot a backyard version of Rambo: First Blood to enter it into...

Family ructions.(God of Carnage, Never So Good, Into the Hoods)(Theater review)
April 5, 2008... God of Carnage Gielgud Never So Good Lyttelton Into the Hoods Novello Nothing terribly original about Yasmina Reza's new play, God of Carnage, which examines the idea that civilised behaviour is a decorative curtain...

Sugar rush.(Pop)
April 5, 2008... As in real life, it's considered faintly reprehensible in music to have a sweet tooth. Greens are good for you, and so is The Velvet Underground, but right now I'm thinking about going up to the shop at the end of the road and buying a packet...

Damp squib.(Carmen)(Opera review)
April 5, 2008... Carmen Royal Opera House What is an opera house for? The question would sound silly if it weren't being asked in a particular and, in this case, rather peculiar context: that of the latest press release from the Royal Opera, which...

Violent deaths revisited.(Radio)(4.4.68; A Long Way from Home)(Radio program review)
April 5, 2008... Two dramas, both based on real life; two deaths by shotgun; two black men destroyed at their peak (although both plays seemed intent on suggesting that their destruction came just as their powers were failing). Radio Four has been reliving the...

It'll end in tears.(Television)(Hughie Green, Most Sincerely; Clay)(Television program review)
April 5, 2008... According to a recently divorced friend of mine, the sex opportunities when you're a single man in your forties are fantastic. Apparently, you don't even need to bother with chat-up lines. You'll be hanging about at the bus stop, or wherever,...

Money and mud.(The turf)(horse racing)
April 5, 2008... It would have been nice to be at Nad Al Sheba racecourse last Saturday to see the burly, majestic Curlin obliterate the pretenders to his crown as the best racehorse in the world and saunter away with the Dubai World Cup. We only see quality...

Garden shorts.(Brief article)
April 5, 2008... In the last few months, I have idly watched the slow spread of a green moss in a very shady place on the north side of our house and, then, the seeding into that moss of the small, native, hairy bitter cress. Usually, I am ruthless in removing...

There will be blood.(High life)
April 5, 2008... Sartre was a far greater fornicator than philosopher, but he did come up with the greatest truism of them all: 'Hell is other people.' (The last line in one of his plays.) Mind you, a Greek savant has bettered him by proclaiming Hell is other...

Garden pursuits.(Low life)
April 5, 2008... The woman hired by the National Trust to see that nothing is pilfered from the upper floor at Clouds Hill, and to answer the visitors' questions, knew almost nothing, she told me, about Colonel T.E. Lawrence, whose house it was from 1923 until...

Letter to hope.(Slow life)
April 5, 2008... There are only two kinds of people: the ones that make you feel better and the ones that make you feel worse. It's a shame, but, as far as I can tell, most people make you feel worse. Some are deliberate s***s, but most of them can't help it....

Cheese politics.(The table)
April 5, 2008... Texas 'No buffalo-thyme pizza?' The grazing grounds around Naples are poisoned, grounds on which herds of water buffalo feed to produce Italy's most delicate cheese. This ecological disaster has had a knock-on effect even here in Texas,...

Four play.(Bridge)(Brief article)
April 5, 2008... No Easter egg hunt for me this year--no snowball fight either, come to think of it. Easter is the time when the faithful make their way to Russell Square for the EBU's four-day pick'n'mix bridgathon. Four events. Four different partners, if you...

Spectator mini-bar offer.(Buyers guide)
April 5, 2008... The budget has hit wine merchants and drinkers quite hard. Those of us who like a sophisticated slurp are paying the price for those who drink themselves senseless on Friday and Saturday nights, and turn our town centres into a hellish version...

Land of the giants: Jeremy Clarke marvels at the fauna of Guyana's rainforests.(STYLE AND TRAVEL)(Travel narrative)
April 5, 2008... There was a punch-up in the cheapest seats on the flight going out to Guyana, three against one, women screaming, red wine flying everywhere. Afterwards, pouring oil on troubled waters, a steward came down the aisle distributing free copies of...

Spa'd for life: John Torode takes the healing waters at Wiesbaden and Baden-Baden.(ARMCHAIR TRAVELLER)
April 5, 2008... It's not often that you come across a living god while hovering outside your hotel idly wondering--why the red carpet? But there we were, on the steps of the historic Nassauer Hof, Wiesbaden when, sirens blaring, a convoy of people-carriers...

Vishy business.(CHESS)(Viswanathan Anand )
April 5, 2008... World champion Viswanathan Anand performed in uninspired fashion at the rapid play/blindfold tournament recently concluded in Nice. However, despite an unflattering final score, he won the only game that is liable to be remembered by posterity...

Bizarre books.(Competition)
April 5, 2008... In Competition No. 2538 you were invited to submit an extract from one of the following books: What to Say When You Talk to Yourself; Nuclear War: What's in it For You; The Joys of Cataloguing. These are all genuine titles taken from the hugely...

1858: And this ...(CROSSWORD)
April 5, 2008... Radial lights read from edge to centre or vice versa, twenty of each. In each of six clues there is a misprint of one letter in the definition part; corrections of misprints spell a two-word nickname for a place. A quotation (in ODQ and...

Spending time with my children makes me appreciate my wife. How does she stand them?(STATUS ANXIETY)(Personal account)
April 5, 2008... I am so strapped for cash that I have been forced to give up my outside office and start working from home. With three children under five, this is far from ideal, but at least there's a small window in the afternoon when the eldest is at...

Mind your language.
April 5, 2008... 'I wonder,' writes Kim Parsons from Helston, or nearby, 'if you have seen the new government-generated No Smoking signs which declare: "It is against the law to smoke in these premises." Since when has on in this context become in?" I have...

The wiki man.
April 5, 2008... One distinction between the private and the public sector is that the former generally has an incentive to offer customers a variety of levels of service, while the latter doesn't. That's why you can get a pizza delivered to your home when...

Dear Mary.(YOUR PROBLEMS SOLVED)
April 5, 2008... Q. Our 16-year-old son is having 30 friends to a party. For obvious security reasons my husband and I will not go out but have agreed not to show our faces downstairs. This raises a problem with food. Our son refuses to have any, complaining...

Brown's debt to society.
April 12, 2008... A German economist visiting Britain was recently said to have declared himself baffled that a report about rising house prices was deemed to be good news. In Germany, he retorted, inflation in house prices, like inflation in food or energy...

Diary.
April 12, 2008... Monday: the nine o'clock meeting. I have measured out my days with BBC meetings, and none rivals this. It is the queen of meetings, a jewel; a crisp attempt to order the world coupled with a dark humour acknowledging the absurdity of the task....

If is to beat Cameron, Brown must forge a new tax contract with the voters.(POLITICS)(Labour Party, David Cameron, Gordon Brown)
April 12, 2008... Is David Cameron feeling his way to a winning political narrative? In a number of recent speeches he has begun to spell out a new debate about the size of the state. It is definitively post-Thatcherite. The battle lines are not the traditional...

The Spectator's notes.
April 12, 2008... The opinions of the Sun newspaper are not noted for nuance, so it has been interesting to follow its unusually careful choice of words about the Olympic torch on its way to China. On Monday, under the headline 'Freedom Wins', the leading...

Diary of a Notting Hill nobody.
April 12, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] MONDAY Major pasta panic! Dispatched to Oxfordshire to help Sam find lasagne sheets for Dave's Thinkers and Opinionators Supper this weekend which is in real danger of being cancelled for the first time in its...

Mad men are taking over the world. And that's no bad thing: inspired by the new American hit TV show, Rory Sutherland--The Spectator's own 'Wiki Man'--says that the capture of the Brown government and almost everything else by advertisers and marketers could be a great leap forward. Persuasion is better than legislation.(Cover story)
April 12, 2008... As an adman myself, I am always delighted when I see one of my colleagues off to work in No. 10, or to advise a political party--even though I'm a little worried that, after working with Sir Martin Sorrell for a few years, David Muir may find...

Flash Gordon.(Cartoon)
April 12, 2008... IN HIS TASK OF OBLITERATING BRITAIN, GORDON'S AIM IS TO WIPE OUT ALL PUBS! Sir! We've bombed all the post offices. Why the pubs? [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Because pubs give pleasure! Remember, we're only taking last orders! ...

In Zimbabwe, hope has turned to silent terror: Peter Oborne says that the post-electoral limbo leaves Mugabe with a series of unpalatable options, the armed forces in disarray and Zimbabweans with a sense of grim foreboding.(Robert Mugabe)
April 12, 2008... On the night after the presidential elections 12 days ago, a British diplomat, Philip Barclay, witnessed the count at the little outpost of Bikisa deep in rural Masvingo. This part of Zimbabwe is Zanu PF heartland. In all five presidential...

Shame on Scottish Tories for their Vichy sell-out: Gerald Warner says that Scotland's Conservatives, far from standing their ground on devolution, have jumped with relish on the gravy train of the Holyrood parliament.
April 12, 2008... The Scottish Play has degenerated into a farce and the indigenous Tories have lost the plot. When the constitutional future of the United Kingdom moved centrestage in late 2007, Unionists were heartened by the deftness of touch David Cameron...

'We have been wimpish about defending our ideas': Salman Rushdie tells Matthew d'Ancona that the idea at the heart of his new novel set in 16th-century Florence and India is that universal values exist and require robust champions.(Interview)
April 12, 2008... The last time I interviewed Salman Rushdie was, as he remarks, a lifetime ago. That was in February 1993, in a safe house in north London guarded by Special Branch officers, only four years after Ayatollah Khomeini sentenced him to death for...

Global warning.
April 12, 2008... Whenever I return to England from abroad, which is often, a very troubling question comes insistently into mind: why are the people here so ugly? I do not mean by this that I think all foreigners are handsome or beautiful, far from it. One...

From despot's PR man to Surrey salesman: Christopher Michael talks to Jean-Baptiste Kim, a former spokesman for Kim Jong-Il's tyranny in Pyongyang, who grasped the truth about the regime.(Interview)
April 12, 2008... When he talks about North Korea, Jean-Baptiste Kim still looks wistful. 'They treated me like a prince,' he says. 'Sometimes I wish I could go back.' He can't. If he did his life would be in serious danger, because for 11 years Kim was a...

Crowded isle.(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
April 12, 2008... Sir: You spell out the complexities of the immigration issue clearly in your leading article of 5 April, but the overriding problem, the nettle that simply has to be grasped, is its effect on the overall size of our island's population. At more...

Stuck in the mud.(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
April 12, 2008... Sir: I read Simon Nixon's article on banking regulation with great interest ('A crisis of credibility', 5 April). And as someone who spent well over 30 years working in Whitehall, I found his comments on the destruction of the Civil Service...

Women make good Apostles.(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
April 12, 2008... Sir: How good it was to read Paul Johnson's piece on Mary Magdalen, and the absurdity of barring women from the priesthood simply because they are female (And another thing, 29 March). One of the chief reasons given for this bar is the fact...

Don't throw in the towel.(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
April 12, 2008... Sir: 'Your Problems Solved' is required reading for tired Tory MPs. But I was shocked to read a letter and answer in the 5 April edition concerning the unavailability of 'really big bath towels--six foot long or so' in SW1. The answer came that...

Survival skills.(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
April 12, 2008... Sir: In her article on Dom Hugh Gilbert, abbot of Pluscarden ('A holy man tipped to lead the nation's Catholics', 22 March), Mary Wakefield asks 'can such an unworldly man survive such a very worldly job?' She then reports that he feels 'it is...

Lawless OAPs.(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
April 12, 2008... Sir: Deborah Devonshire ('Death of a Post Office', 5 April) asserts that the old are disregarded because 'they don't stab each other after a bout of drinking and have never bothered the police or a councillor in their lives'. What cocoon does...

Canapes are correct.(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
April 12, 2008... Sir: Further to Charles Moore's item about upside-down toast (The Spectator's Notes, 29 March) and your correspondent's follow-up (Letters, 5 April), taste buds only respond to the primary tastes--sweet, sour, bitter and salt. The flavours and...

Boris must bore for Britain till he wins--and then shine like Tennyson's dragonfly.(ANOTHER VOICE)(Boris Johnson )
April 12, 2008... Boris Johnson is doing as well as I hoped and better than I expected. On this page at the beginning of August last year I was presumptuous enough to offer some advice for the man who looked certain to be the Conservative candidate for Mayor of...

What has that thrush got to sing about, asked Mr Hardy.(AND ANOTHER THING)
April 12, 2008... Nature likes to shock us, occasionally, and make us think. That dolphin who spotted the two stranded whales, and led them to safety, was the best item of news we have had for many weary weeks. There are cheerful mysteries in creation, as well...

Facing the flak at Terminal 5: Judi Bevan meets BAA chairman Sir Nigel Rudd, an Eighties entrepreneur turned City grandee who still relishes tough challenges--and has met several at Heathrow.(BUSINESS)(Interview)
April 12, 2008... Sir Nigel Rudd, chairman of BAA and motor group Pendragon and deputy chairman of Barclays Bank, has a reputation for riding towards the sound of gunfire. 'I like difficult challenges--if it's not difficult, where's the fun?' he says, an impish...

Waterfront glamour and indoor skiing: an industrial landscape transformed.(CITY LIFE)
April 12, 2008... I must declare an interest from the outset. I was born in Wakefield. I have never been especially forthcoming about my birthplace, not because I am ashamed of it, but because few people know or care much about this little city. Wakefield's...

Several careers open to talent.(Cold Cream)(Book review)
April 12, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] COLD CREAM by Ferdinand Mount Bloomsbury, 20 [pounds sterling], pp. 368, ISBN 9780747595076 [telephone] 16 [pounds sterling] (plus 2.45 [pounds sterling] p&p) 0870 429 6655 There are two ways...

Too much remembrance of things past.(Remember Me... A Novel)(Book review)
April 12, 2008... REMEMBER ME... A NOVEL by Melvyn Bragg Sceptre, 17.99 [pounds sterling], pp. 551, ISBN 9780340951217 [telephone] 14.39 [pounds sterling] (plus 2.45 [pounds sterling] p&p) 0870 429 6655 Remember Me... is the story...

That sweet city.(This Secret Garden: Oxford Revisited)(Book review)
April 12, 2008... THIS SECRET GARDEN: OXFORD REVISITED by Justin Cartwright OUP, 9.99 [pounds sterling], pp. 223, ISBN 9786747579618 [telephone] 7.99 [pounds sterling] (plus 2.45 [pounds sterling] p&p) 0870 429 6655 What do they know...

The best possible ragbag.(Gig: The Life and Times of a Rock-Star Fantasist)(Book review)
April 12, 2008... GIG: THE LIFE AND TIMES OF A ROCK-STAR FANTASIST by Simon Armitage Viking, 16.99 [pounds sterling], pp. 303, ISBN 9780670915804 [telephone] 13.59 [pounds sterling] (plus 2.45 [pounds sterling] p&p) 0870 429 6655 I...

Out of puff.(The Last Cigarette: The Smoking Diaries, vol. 3)(Book review)
April 12, 2008... THE LAST CIGARETTE: THE SMOKING DIARIES, VOLUME III by Simon Gray Granta, 14.99 [pounds sterling], pp. 312, ISBN 9781847080387 [telephone] 11.99 [pounds sterling] (plus 2.45 [pounds sterling] p&p) 0870 429 6655 ...

The magic lingers on.(The Enchantress of Florence)(Book review)
April 12, 2008... THE ENCHANTRESS OF FLORENCE by Salman Rushdie Cape, 18.99 [pounds sterling], pp. 356, ISBN 9780224061636 [telephone] 15.19 [pounds sterling] (plus 2.45 [pounds sterling] p&p) 0870 429 6655 At the beginning of Salman...