Spectator articles from April 2009

Spectator archives from April 2009

Cartoon.
April 4, 2009... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Flash Gordon.(Cartoon)
April 4, 2009... THEY ALL WANT TO SHAKE MY HAND FOR SAVING THE WORLD [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Standing room.(Column)
April 4, 2009... I live in fear of that peculiar sharp intake of breath I seem to hear whenever I ask service men actually to service anything I own that doesn't work. It's not a promising sound. Dishwashers that stop washing dishes, internet servers that fail...

Brussels notebook.
April 4, 2009... It's dawning on me that the Prime Minister can't listen to criticism. I don't just mean that he can't respond to criticism; I mean that he literally can't listen to it. When he came to the European Parliament to drum up support for his spending...

Bloody rude.(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
April 4, 2009... Sir: Michael Portillo ('The view from Basra', 28 March) accuses the British army of arrogance and, effectively, of incompetence. He says we've been humiliated. This may accord with his new television persona, but it is still disingenuous, apart...

Invoking britishness.(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
April 4, 2009... Sir: Matthew d'Ancona's work on Britishness and identity has been both welcome and thought-provoking ('We need our roots more than ever', 28 March). However, I would like to add that Gordon Brown's 'Scottishness' is not the problem with his...

Rebirth of Shakespeare.(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
April 4, 2009... Sir: Adam Zamoyski was unintentionally misleading in his review of Charles Glass's American in Paris (Books, 28 March). He states that Shakespeare & Company, the bookshop in Paris started by American Sylvia Beach in Rue de l'Odeon in 1919,...

Knee to know.(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
April 4, 2009... Sir: It must be sensible to retain scepticism over the accuracy of any monumental work of reference, and it is right therefore to challenge Wikipedia about its lack of rigour (Books, 28 March). Even Dr Johnson had to acknowledge the...

A point of geography.(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
April 4, 2009... Sir: Ross Clark asks ('Cancel the G20 Summit', 21 March) why we do not have 'a G193--the number of independent nations recognised by the United Nations? If we are going to create a new global economic order, the Cayman Islands has every right...

Articulate incompetents.(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
April 4, 2009... Sir: In his article ('The real reason I had to join The Spectator', 28 March), John Cleese refers to the existence in the world of management of the 'articulate incompetent'. Perhaps unwittingly, in his characterisation of such an individual,...

Sorry, Mr President, but bringing your own car to the G20 summit was plain rude.(SHARED OPINION)(Barack Obama)(Viewpoint essay)
April 4, 2009... It's the little slights that really hurt. The ones where they just don't seem to have thought about it. Certainly, we're all thrilled that the great President Obama has deigned to make a visit to this little island vassal state. But why did he...

The Great Divide.(Poem)
April 4, 2009... The Great Divide Your kith and kin are listed in Debrett's, my people eat their tea at half past five, for I am from the land of serviettes where no one hunts, or cares for string quartets; because of this I'll...

That sinking feeling.(The Boat That Rocked)(Movie review)
April 4, 2009... The Boat that rocked 15, Nationwide Now, although it has always been fashionable to take a bit of a pop at Richard Curtis and his 'feel good' movies (Four Weddings, Notting Hill, Love Actually) and I've been as guilty as anyone--I am...

Sporting triumphs.(Low life)(clay pigeon shooting)(Viewpoint essay)
April 4, 2009... On the Eastern Airways flight from Bristol to Aberdeen I spotted a shiny 2 [pounds sterling] coin lying in the aisle. The businessman in the seat opposite saw me lean down and retrieve it. 'Toss you for it--heads,' he said. It came down tails....

Top play.(Bridge)(Brief article)
April 4, 2009... I've been lucky enough to watch some of the world's top players in action. For them, the technique of the card play is almost second nature, and it's more about psychology and having the right mindset. One of the best and most successful...

An expense we cannot afford.(corrupt members of parliament)
April 11, 2009... The naming and shaming of MPs who are abusing the expenses system is becoming a Sunday ritual. Each week the papers carry a fresh set of revelations; each week public cynicism about our elected representatives becomes more deeply entrenched....

Nostradarling.(Alistair Darling )(Brief article)
April 11, 2009... As Oscar Wilde quipped of Little Nell's death, you would have to have a heart of stone not to laugh. On 24 November, Alistair Darling told the Commons: 'I, too, am forecasting that output will continue to fall in the UK, for the first two...

Diary.
April 11, 2009... As a type, authors are famous for the amount of time they waste. We change light bulbs, stare out of the window and congratulate ourselves if we have managed to turn out 800 words in a day. But having recently spent some time working in a big...

Whatever is in Darling's Budget, there is good reason to think that the worst is yet to come.(POLITICS)(Alistair Darling)
April 11, 2009... The old wartime poster 'Keep Calm and Carry On' has been reprinted recently and is turning up in the strangest places around Westminster. I have seen it on an MP's desk and emblazoned on the cufflinks of a Treasury civil servant. It certainly...

Diary of a Notting Hill nobody.
April 11, 2009... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Monday Bath plugs 25; scatter cushions 173; patio heaters 15; gazebos 3 (v bad). I've made an official complaint to Nigel. They're going to have to get me some help. I cannot man the Expenses Hotline on my...

The C of E has forgotten its purpose. Why, exactly, does it exist? Rod Liddle offers an Easter message to the leaders of the Church, who have ditched its traditions and reduced it to a sort of superannuated ad-hoc branch of social services. It has lost all sense of mission and direction. Whatever happened to muscular Christianity?(Church of England )(Cover story)
April 11, 2009... What did you give up for Lent? I gave up chives again. Forty-five days of deprivation. According to the ecclesiastical calendar I am allowed my first chive on Saturday--but do you know what? I'm going to say no. My willpower has become a marvel...

Flash Gordon.(Gordon Brown)(Cartoon)
April 11, 2009... It's appalling that having saved the world's economy nobody came to cheer Gordon as he marched back [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

In New York, pregnancy is a form of tyranny: Alexandra Starr discovers that in Manhattan expecting a baby is all about you and your performance, rather than the child: doctors and websites give the mother-to-be no quarter.
April 11, 2009... Even Sylvia Plath (though usually pretty downbeat about life) viewed pregnancy as an exalted state. In her diary she characterised gestation as 'the Great Experience a [woman's] body is formed to partake of, to nourish', while in her poem...

I half expected to see Welles run towards me: Harry Mount celebrates the 60th anniversary of Carol Reed's masterly film The Third Man with a tour of Harry Lime's postwar Vienna--the true star of the movie.(Orson Welles)(Report)
April 11, 2009... Vienna Six times a week, the Burg Kino cinema in Vienna shows The Third Man in its small Studio Theatre. 'It's best that you book,' said the polite young man behind the counter in perfect English, when I came along in the morning to see if...

A granny in the front line against New Labour; Charles Clover hails the courage of Elizabeth Pascoe, who has fought against the compulsory purchase of her Victorian home, and the laws that enable such state vandalism.
April 11, 2009... Elizabeth Pascoe, a granny in her sixties with a fondness for pink cardigans, is an unlikely heroine, but she is one to me. For when Liverpool city council and a government agency told her, four years ago, that they wanted to compulsorily...

Listen and learn.(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
April 11, 2009... Sir: We're going to have to get used to cuts, says Kate Chisholm (Arts, 28 March), while criticising the axing of the last children's programme on the BBC's mainstream networks as a cut too far. Last year a meagre 1.6 million [pounds sterling]...

Settle the act.(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
April 11, 2009... Sir: Charles Moore suggests (The Spectator's Notes, 4 April) that the best approach to the tradition of Catholics being prohibited from marrying an heir to the throne is to 'leave well enough alone'. Yet that is not an orthodox conservative...

A coincidental mistress.(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
April 11, 2009... Sir: How deliciously coincidental that the new New York mistress ('Me, the femme fatale du jour?', 4 April) should be called Floethe! (I assume it rhymes with the German poet?) Dr A.E. Hanwell York

The poor little Greek hick.(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
April 11, 2009... Sir: Taki writes (High Life, 4 April) that New York is 'the grail we're all seeking'. By misquoting Lorenz Hart, the laureate of Broadway, he reveals himself to be a hick. Hart's lyric for 'I Wish I Were In Love Again' runs: 'The broken dates,...

No nemesis.(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
April 11, 2009... Sir: I was rather puzzled to see Deborah Ross (Arts, 28 March) referring to Don Revie as Brian Clough's nemesis. Surely one's nemesis is the agent of one's downfall, the term deriving from the Greek goddess of retribution. Why have journalists...

Liverpool's legacy.(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
April 11, 2009... Sir: Andrew Lambirth's review (Arts, 14 March) of Maggi Hambling's portraits of George Melly, while full of praise, is strangely critical of the fact that the show, on until 31 May, is at the Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool, Melly's birthplace....

Correction.(LETTERS)(Correction notice)
April 11, 2009... Last week's Spectator included an article by Victoria Floethe about the response in New York to an affair she had with Michael Wolff. Ms Floethe referred to the 'obviously gleeful revenge toward Michael' allegedly taken by [Rupert] 'Murdoch's...

The spirits of Spectator editors past battled within me as I embarked on a criminal act.(ANOTHER VOICE)
April 11, 2009... What came over me? I'm not a natural lawbreaker and was never a rebel as a youth. I deplore poll-tax rioters, eco-rioters and every lawless protest against supposed injustice, and read with awe of Charles Moore's defiant stand against the TV...

No time to relax for BA's fighter pilot; British Airways staff have sometimes been accused of 'working without enthusiasm', says Judi Bevan--but you certainly couldn't say that of chief executive Willie Walsh.(BUSINESS)(British Airways)
April 11, 2009... Before meeting Willie Walsh, I take a stroll round Terminal 5, marvelling at the vast, elegant haven of calm and efficiency it has become compared with the pandemonium of last March's opening. All looks serene until I ask the nice young press...

Looking back without anger.(The Uses and Abuses of History)(Book review)
April 11, 2009... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] THE USES AND ABUSES OF HISTORY by Margaret MacMillan Profile, 11.99 [pounds sterling], pp. 256, ISBN 9781846682049 [telephone] 9.59 (plus 2.45 [pounds sterling] p&p) 0870 429 6655 Margaret...

Puzzling out the past.(The Pattern in the Carpet)(Book review)
April 11, 2009... THE PATTERN IN THE CARPET by Margaret Drabble Atlantic, 18.99 [pounds sterling], pp. 349, ISBN 9781843546191 [telephone] 15.19 [pounds sterling] (plus 2.45 [pounds sterling] p&p) 0870 429 6655 [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] How...

Shrine of a connoisseur.(Sir John Soane's Museum, London)(Book review)
April 11, 2009... SIR JOHN SOANE'S MUSEUM, LONDON by Tim Knox, photographs by Derry Moore Merrell, 24.95 [pounds sterling] pp. 160, ISBN 9781858944753 [telephone] 19.95 [pounds sterling] (plus 2.45 [pounds sterling] p&p) 0870 429 6655 Sir John...

Doomed to despotism.('Khomeini's Ghost' and 'The Life and Death of the Shah')(Book review)
April 11, 2009... KHOMEINI'S GHOST by Con Coughlin Macmillan, 25 [pounds sterling], pp. 367, ISBN 9780230714540 [telephone] 20.79 [pounds sterling] (plus 2.45 [pounds sterling] p&p) 0870 429 6655 [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] THE LIFE AND DEATH...

A thoroughly good egg.(Stanley I Presume)(Book review)
April 11, 2009... STANLEY I PRESUME by Stanley Johnson 4th Estate, 18.99 [pounds sterling], pp. 312, ISBN 9780007296729 [telephone] 15.19 [pounds sterling] (plus 2.45 [pounds sterling] p&p) 0870 429 6655 A friend who belongs to an old-fashioned...

In a class of his own.(Maurice Bowra: A Life)(Book review)
April 11, 2009... MAURICE BOWRA: A LIFE by Leslie Mitchell OUP, 25 [pounds sterling], pp. 385, ISBN 9780199295845 [telephone] 20.79 [pounds sterling] (plus 2.45 [pounds sterling] p&p) 0870 429 6655 [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] 'Voltaire and the...

Nervalian fragment.(BOOKS)(Poem)
April 11, 2009... ... But when we went out, joined by the lolloping yellow dog with sensitive eyebrows, the slanted sun was pointing down eleven avenues, a hunter's moon was up, yellow, full, flakes of milky blue around the nimbus and...

Beyond 'face-painting'.(John Constable)
April 11, 2009... Constable Portraits: the Painter & His Circle National Portrait Gallery until 14 June Sponsored by British Land The portrait was the dominant form in British painting up to the end of the 18th century, principally because this...

Second helpings.("I Capuleti e i Montecchi", "Dido and Aeneas", and "Acis and Galatea")(Opera review)
April 11, 2009... I Capuleti e i Montecchi; Dido and Aeneas; Acis and Galatea Royal Opera House There has been a three-week gap between the opening and closing sets of performances of the latest revival of Bellini's I Capuleti e i Montecchi at the Royal...

Promises, promises.(Parlor song)(Theater review)
April 11, 2009... Parlour song Almeida tusk tusk Royal Court Back in 1995 Jez Butterworth got tagged with the 'Most Promising Playwright' beeper and he still hasn't shaken it off. Butterworth is an excellent second-rate writer, he has a...

When is it acceptable?(Music)
April 11, 2009... Someone needs to write a history of vibrato. Clearly this should be Roger Norrington: to judge from his words on Radio Three recently he has given the topic much thought and come up with some historically-based conclusions. I suspect he isn't...

Power to disturb.(Tony Manero)(Movie review)
April 11, 2009... Tony Manero 18, Key Cities This is a Chilean film of the kind that is probably only showing at an independent cinema quite far from you until last Thursday but that is life, so get over it. Also, the only Easter alternative seemed to...

Our island story.(Radio)(Report)
April 11, 2009... 'Radio is a way of binding people together,' says Lesley Douglas, former Controller of Radio 2 in a Guardian magazine cover-story this week celebrating the richness of British radio. It could be the answer to our editor's quest for what it...

No debate.(Television)(Argumental)(Television program review)
April 11, 2009... On the posters in the Tube at the moment are these adverts for Argumental, which is the Dave channel's first self-generated panel show. I don't want to knock Dave too much because it's generally a good thing: the reliable stand-by you end up...

All of a Twitter.(The turf)
April 11, 2009... There is nothing quite like Aintree's Ladies Day on Grand National Friday when the girls emerge from local tanning salons, whatever the weather, in roaming she-packs of wispy chiffon. No opportunity to add an extra bow or ra-ra flounce is...

Paternal love.(High life)
April 11, 2009... New York 'Lock up your daughters! Is the world ready for Taki Jr?' This was the New York Observer headline, followed by: 'Meet the only son of the world's naughtiest Greek playboy'. Under any other circumstances, I'd be blushing--who the...

Confused of Balham.(Real life)
April 11, 2009... 'Do not go to the NHS walk-in centre, it will only upset you.' This was the advice from a friend last week as I drove around Tooting with earache searching in vain for St George's Hospital. How a building with 1,000 beds and 6,000 staff is...

Celebrity play.(Bridge)(Celebrity Grand Slam)(Brief article)
April 11, 2009... Is bridge finally about to become a spectator sport? For too long, poker has hogged our TV screens. Bridge is just as gripping, yet ever since Zia Mahmood presented his own show nearly 20 years ago (becoming the only sex-symbol bridge has ever...

1909: New Yorker?(CROSSWORD)(Brief article)
April 11, 2009... Four pairs of unclued lights suggest a word minus one of its first four letters. A synonym (5) of this word will appear in the completed grid and must be shaded. Elsewhere, ignore two accents. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] [ILLUSTRATION...

Mind your language.(Holy Week)(Column)
April 11, 2009... What do you call today, the day before Easter? It is increasingly called Easter Saturday. That is what the BBC calls it in its programme guides. Robin Hood and Casualty await us as an alternative to the Easter Vigil. But Easter Monday is the...

The wiki man: a fortnightly column on technology and the web.
April 11, 2009... I had been expecting it for weeks: the announcement of the first Google Street View divorce. A lawyer speaking anonymously to the Sun now claims to have been briefed to start proceedings after his client was browsing the Google site and spotted...