Spectator articles from August 2004

Spectator archives from August 2004

Portrait of the week.
August 7, 2004... Thirteen men of Asian appearance in their twenties and thirties were arrested by police investigating terrorism; the arrests were in north-west London; Bushey, Hertfordshire; Luton, Bedfordshire and Blackburn, Lancashire. Separate plans by...

Path time.
August 7, 2004... Listen hard and you can hear J. Bonington-Jagworth grumbling loudly. The Association of London Government has announced that it is to fine motorists up to 100 [pounds sterling] a time for driving in the capital's cycle lanes. The RAC...

Diary.
August 7, 2004... Las Vegas Whatever else we import from American politics, please let us avoid the appalling new practice of requiring children to give testimonials on behalf of their parents. I was sitting with my 11-year-old daughter in our VIP suite in...

Trees, beware--yet another fat report is on its way from your company.(City And Suburban)
August 7, 2004... Good news for papermakers, security printers and the Post Office: companies' annual reports and accounts are all set to grow fatter still. Their bulk has already trebled in a decade or so. They have to accommodate the remuneration committee's...

Even serious newspapers have adopted the sex and football agenda of the NoW.(Media Studie)
August 7, 2004... The other day someone asked me what the story of Sven-Goran Eriksson, the Football Association and the girl was all about. I hesitated. I thought that I understood it--and had even written a column in the Daily Mail complaining about the lies...

There's no time like the present: stop moaning, says Michael Hanlon. Forget global warming and health scares. We live in the happiest, healthiest and most peaceful era in human history.
August 7, 2004... The world is, we are told day after day, week after week, going to hell in a handcart. After the most brutal, catastrophic and inhuman century in history, the new millennium has kicked off in the way it dearly intends to go on. War, famine and...

The blairs.
August 7, 2004... THIS IS WHY I WANT US TO STAY IN EUROPE. IT'S NO CHEAP HERE PALAZZO BERLUSCONI [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Mind your language.
August 7, 2004... Shakespeare invented the words anchovy, well-ordered, worm-hole and zany. Or did he? I've been nagged at the back of my mind (a tender spot) by doubts about Shakespeare ever since I wrote (5 June) about Dr David Crystal's remarks in his...

The un-American activities of Mr Bush: Jonathan Freedland says he still loves the Land of the Free even though he detests the present administration.
August 7, 2004... There are few vices a left-leaning liberal cannot admit to these days, but affection for the United States is among them. The sneering, the mockery that once attended more prohibited passions is instant and severe: just wait for the derision...

It's time to move on: Britain has no reason to apologise to Poland, says Simon Heffer: we could not have helped the resistance fighters during the Warsaw uprising.
August 7, 2004... The Polish Prime Minister, Marek Belka, has been busy these last few days commemorating the 60th anniversary of the Warsaw uprising. As we have all just been reminded, this was the action taken by organised Polish anti-communist and anti-Nazi...

Ancient & modern.
August 7, 2004... When Plato writes about education, he comes up with a brilliant image of the master-pupil relationship: 'After a long partnership in a common life, truth flashes on the soul like a flame kindled by a leaping spark.' The Labour and Tory...

Think before you bomb: Daniel Wolf believes it unlikely that armed intervention can bring justice to Sudan.
August 7, 2004... If there is a crisis in a remote place, and governments, newspapers and aid agencies start to agitate for 'action', you naturally begin to suspect that much of the information you are being fed is false. When Tony Blair starts talking about...

Second opinion.
August 7, 2004... Judge not that ye be not judgmental, for in making a judgment you commit the worst, indeed the only, possible sin in an age of tolerance. This, perhaps, is the modern equivalent of the paradox of the Cretan liar: that we judge negatively only...

It sure beats The Priory: Celia Walden says that the evangelical Alpha course makes the rich and beautiful feel good about themselves and provides them with a dating agency.
August 7, 2004... The chances are that if you're nearing 30, you have begun to feel the itch of dissatisfaction. You've struggled to find the perfect profession, job, partner and home, but have failed in at least one respect, and are suffering front a sense of...

State of decay: Peter Hitchens says that allowing secret abortions for minors mocks the rule of law, and adds to the corruption of national life.
August 7, 2004... There has seldom been a time when responsible, intelligent people were less interested in serious politics. The main opposition, gripped by some Freudian delusion because reality is too hard to bear, behaves as if it were still the government...

China is a wicked country, Tony, but please don't bomb it. Someone could get hurt.(Thought For The Day)
August 7, 2004... Singapore Albert Cheng is Hong Kong's most popular radio chatshow host. Or, at least, he was. Last week he was sacked by his employers, Commercial Radio, for what they insisted were 'sound commercial reasons'. This is a little mystifying,...

Value of cancer checks.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
August 7, 2004... From Dr Robert Huddart Sir: Brendan O'Neill in his article 'What a load of b*ll*cks' (31 July) is scathing about the need for men to check themselves for testicular cancer. While testicular cancer is uncommon, it is the most common cancer...

Long live Christianity.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
August 7, 2004... From Rosemary Thorpe Sir: William J. Abbott says that Christianity 'is on its way to becoming a dead religion' (Letters, 31 July). I am sick and tired of this sort of thing. In the context of the billions of years the Earth has existed,...

Toxic testing.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
August 7, 2004... From Barbara Davies Sir: I agree with much of Ross Clark's article ('The terror war we can win', 31 July). We certainly need to win this battle to safeguard the vital and excellent medical research carried out in the UK. However, Mr...

Forts et origo.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
August 7, 2004... From John Kenworthy-Browne Sir: Pace Paul Johnson (And another thing, 31 July) and other critics, the primary meaning of 'fountain' is not jet, but a spring or source of water; Horace's fore Bandusiae, a modest spring, can still be seen at...

Chaucerian coinage.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
August 7, 2004... From Desmond FitzPatrick Sir: In his review of Posh (Books, 31 July) Dighy Durrant himself is somewhat at sixes and sevens in attributing the origin of that expression to the judgment of the Lord Mayor of London of 1484. A century before...

Why do they want to destroy Giorgione as a painter?(And Another Thing)
August 7, 2004... The most interesting play on in London at the moment is The Old Masters at the Comedy Theatre. Simon Gray has written a drama about the conflict between commerce and idealism in the sale of paintings. Lord Duveen, in an astrakhan-coloured coat,...

The Notting Hill Tories obviously need to be interviewed by social workers.(Shared Opinion)
August 7, 2004... The previously most famous resident of Netting Hill, now publicised as possessing its own Tory 'set', must have been John Reginald Halliday Christie, who emerged after the second world war as a serial killer of women. He was hanged--one of...

Adding to the gaiety of nations.(Book Review)
August 7, 2004... EDGE OF MIDNIGHT: THE LIFE OF JOHN SCHLESINGER by William J. Mann Hutchinson, 25 [pounds sterling], pp. 628, ISBN 0091794897 Directing movies is more like a sport than an art: it requires skill, timing, stamina and a good eye. Like...

The ghost of Twelfth Night past.(Book Review)
August 7, 2004... ALCHEMY by Maureen Duffy Fourth Estate, 15.99 [pounds sterling], pp. 380, ISBN 0007149654 There never were any flies on Maureen Duffy. Like her near-contemporary Francis King, whose last work featured an asylum-seeker at large in North...

The past as good entertainment.(Book Review)
August 7, 2004... HISTORY AND THE MEDIA edited by David Cannadine Palgrave, 19.99 [pounds sterling], pp. 175, ISBN 1403920370 The main lesson of history is that we do not learn the lessons of history. Did (for example) anyone at the Pentagon heed the wisdom...

Goodies and baddies galore.(Book Review)
August 7, 2004... THE SHADOW OF THE WIND by Carlos Ruiz Zafon Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 12.99 [pounds sterling], pp. 403, ISBN 029784752X Carlos Ruiz Zafon's novel has won a clutch of literary prizes in Spain. Its sales, when it came out in 2001, were greeted...

Limping to the holy presence.(Book Review)
August 7, 2004... PILGRIMAGE TO THE END OF THE WORLD by Conrad Rudolph University of Chicago Press, 21 [pounds sterling], pp. 131, ISBN 0226731251 A 12th-century eyewitness at Santiago de Compostela described his fellow pilgrims: Some, such as the...

Escaping the gallows--and classification.(Book Review)
August 7, 2004... THE EXILED COLLECTOR by Anne Sebba John Murray, 22.50 [pounds sterling], pp. 308, ISBN 0719563283 If any of Byron's contemporaries at Cambridge had been asked to nominate The Man Most Likely To, it is a safe bet that it would have been...

The impact of the immigrants.(Book Review)
August 7, 2004... FROM THE LOWER EAST SIDE TO HOLLYWOOD: JEWS IN AMERICAN POPULAR CULTURE by Paul Buhle Verso, 16 [pounds sterling], pp. 304, ISBN 1859845983 In New York in 1920 the writer Hattie Mayer, under her pen name Anzia Yezierska, published her...

Life and letters.
August 7, 2004... Even all these years after his death, that great trickster Graham Greene continues to cause trouble. The small press Hesperus has been forced to cancel its publication of a Greene novella called No Man's Land. Enclosed with the autumn catalogue...

The lure of a festival.(Arts)
August 7, 2004... For 13 years now, the tiny fishing village of Risor in southern Norway has played host to a chamber-music festival. It's one of those performer-centred events, where one or two star musicians--in this case, the pianist Leif Ove Andsnes and the...

Great exploration.(Exhibitions)
August 7, 2004... Making Faces Sunley Room, National Gallery, until 26 September Witty titles for exhibitions about portraiture are the order of the day. Over at the Hayward Gallery is About Face (reviewed 24 July), and now after a brief tour around the...

Critical commotions.(Theatre)(Theater Review)
August 7, 2004... A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum Olivier Guantanamo New Ambassadors Fully Committed Menier Chocolate Factory A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum opens with a song called 'Comedy Tonight' in which Stephen Sondheim...

Mixed emotions.(Opera)(Opera Review)
August 7, 2004... Luisa Miller Opera Holland Park In the course of Verdi's long, slow, halting progress towards eventual greatness, there are few works as weird in their mixture of mere formula, utter ineptitude and moments of inspiration than Luisa Miller....

Heady craziness.(Music 1)
August 7, 2004... New Orleans; Mardi Gras: stereotypes and expectations accumulated down the years change and pale confronted by a first experience of the actuality. Hitting the city by fortunate chance in its most riotous season, I was caught up and blown about...

Time to open up.(Music 2)
August 7, 2004... The traditional and continuing isolation of Britain in Europe is a fact of life which the annual round of summer music-festivalling brings into sharp focus. It is a bad business that we are held to be smiling down our noses at people who are so...

Not so DED.(Gardens)
August 7, 2004... The daily walk I take in the countryside loses something of its pleasure in June and July. The sight of numerous small trees in the roadside hedgerows, with their branches rigid and leafless or with sick, yellow foliage, causes me a sharp pang...

Dutiful and dull.(Radio)
August 7, 2004... The diaries of King George V turned out to be as brisk, uncomplicated and dull as the man himself, judging by the extracts broadcast last week. In Book of the Week: 1914--The Diary of King George V, presented by the historian Robert Lacey,...

Chekhov on Chesil Beach.(DVDs)(Video Recording Review)
August 7, 2004... By the time Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger came to make The Small Back Room in 1948-49 they had acquired a reputation as the most adventurous, imaginative and eccentric team in the English cinema. Their six preceding films--The Life and...

Philosophy lesson.(High life)
August 7, 2004... St Tropez Summer is supposedly a time when you can leave behind the cares of the world, a vision of the good life, a back-to-nature period after the barbarities of the city. In the South of France, as in other glitzy resorts, summer has...

Playing up.(Low life)
August 7, 2004... Stansted to Cork. Flight full. I'm into the second day of a bout of food poisoning and staring at the bottom of a Ryanair sick bag. (Ryanair sick bags are dual-purpose. You can vomit into them and pop rolls of film in and send them away to be...

All change.(Singular life)
August 7, 2004... I was lunching with some friends the other day (I don't lunch for every column, incidentally, but these happened to be friends from abroad whom I hadn't seen for a while). I took them to a restaurant and we began catching up on our news over...

Crocodile coup.(Bridge)
August 7, 2004... PLAYING regularly with an expert can really pay off. Kitty Teltcher began partnering Sally Brock--arguably the best woman player in the country--just over a year ago. In February, they sailed through the women's trials and qualified to play for...

Piscator in vinculis.(Chess)
August 7, 2004... Bobby Fischer, the enfant terrible and stupor mundi of chess, has been arrested by Japanese immigration authorities and is awaiting possible deportation to America. The casus belli was Fischer's insistence on playing in Belgrade against Spassky...

1676: Botanist.(Crossword)
August 7, 2004... He was the original 38 and namer of '1A/18' (in ODQ) which has the form of an 10 17 ascended on each side by four 28 with the 15 in the 39. Solvers must shade the two unclued lights which together give the letters of his name (two words). ...

Sven and sweet FA.(Spectator Sport)
August 7, 2004... I had been ploughing on at my desk in the usual desultory way a couple of weeks ago, tootling out some tripe to greet the start of the new soccer season--already upon us, can you believe?--when, like a perfectionist Hollywood poet, I had to...

Your problems solved.(Spectator Sport)
August 7, 2004... Dear Mary Q. I am 16 and am looking forward to the delights of Daymer Bay in Cornwall, a meeting-ground renowned for its nightly teenage public-school gatherings. I am somewhat nervous as I do not smoke, and most of my friends use...

Portrait of the week.
August 14, 2004... More than 140 cockle-pickers were rescued four miles from shore on the sands of Morecambe Bay after the tractors of two rival gangs collided. Four rowers attempting to break the west-east Atlantic crossing record were rescued on the 39th day...

First gold to Greece.
August 14, 2004... Dick Pound, a senior member of the International Olympic Committee, speaks for many when he says of the Greeks: 'They think things being ready at 11:59 is plenty of time. It drives the rest of the world nuts.' It has become commonplace over the...

Diary.
August 14, 2004... The Pope is going to Lourdes at the weekend. But he has made it clear in advance that he is not going for a cure, even though he has Parkinson's disease and for several years now has looked as if he might die at any moment. Rather, he is going...

The best news for Michael Howard is that Blair has decided to fight the next election.(Politics)
August 14, 2004... On Monday, just as people settled down for the summer holidays, Michael Howard returned from his. He slipped back into Britain and at once set to work. He is "already two thirds of the way through the probable term of his leadership. Just eight...

The Spectator's notes.(Critical Essay)
August 14, 2004... Thinking about the outbreak of the first world war 90 years ago this month, I returned to Hardy's famous short poem 'In Time of "The Breaking of Nations"', which he wrote in 1915. It is about how some things never change, outlasting war: 'Only...

While England sleeps; George Osborne defends the war in Iraq, and says that those who dismiss the war on terror are underestimating a ruthless and implacable foe.(Cover Story)
August 14, 2004... This week an unusual piece of junk mail joined the forest of pizza delivery leaflets and minicab cards on my doormat. It was a white envelope marked with six chunky coloured circles under which was written: 'Inside: Important Information from...

The Blairs.
August 14, 2004... DAD! WHY DO WE HAVE TO COME TO THE SAME PLACE EVERY YEAR

Mind your language.
August 14, 2004... I'm sure I can't remember hearing it used wrongly before, and now I've heard it twice in a fortnight from politicians. Perhaps they catch it from each other. The phrase in question is in extremis and it has been used as if it meant...

Another form of racism: Andrew Kenny says that the National party has met its logical end--in the bosom of the racist ANC.
August 14, 2004... Last week an Afrikaans man with a plump face, large spectacles and the nickname of 'Kortbroek' (Short Pants) announced that he was joining the ANC. Thus ends the 90-year history of the most radical and notorious political party in the history...

Bernard Levin remembered: Katharine Whitehorn on the prodigious gifts of the late columnist who came to prominence on this magazine.
August 14, 2004... I knew Bernard Levin when we both worked on The Spectator at the end of the Fifties during its uncharacteristically radical period. He wrote a parliamentary sketch under the name of Taper, and was about the first to treat the political scene as...

Ban this evil rag! Benet Simon on the video game Manhunt, whose sales were boosted by a Mail campaign against it.
August 14, 2004... The last time I visited my cousins--three boys between the ages of eight and 13--they were playing a new video game that their mother had bought for them. The eight-year-old had hooked the computer up to an overhead projector and was cruising...

Ancient & modern.
August 14, 2004... How Francis Crick, discoverer of the structure of DNA, must be enjoying himself in the Underworld! He had so much in common with the early Greek philosophers. These thinkers, who were natural scientists rather than philosophers, debated what...

Friendly fire.(Brief Article)(Poem)
August 14, 2004... Friendly fire The Scotch--what a verminous race! Canny, pushy, chippy, they're all over the place, Battening off us with false bonhomie, Polluting our stock, undermining our economy. Down with sandy hair and knobbly...

Basta Italia! On the eve of the Blair-Berlusconi summit, Carla Powell says Italy is still so ill governed that her new villa has no fresh water.
August 14, 2004... Forty years ago I left Italy to marry a Brit and adopt the British way of life, in so far as anyone who is not British can. I carried with me a romanticised image of my country of birth as a land not just of sunshine but of warm, generous and...

No one wronged Faria: Rod Liddle sees no case for blaming the FA executives who slept with Ms Alam.
August 14, 2004... And so, the regiment of horribly wronged women marches ever onward and has, in the last week or so, claimed another male scalp. Mark Palios, the chief executive of the Football Association, has resigned over his affair with Faria Alam, a...

How to make girls cry; Olivia Glazebrook analyses the power of Magic FM, scientifically programmed to tug at your heartstrings.
August 14, 2004... The term 'feelgood' generates a groan from most who hear it. Feelgood movies: corny old romances. Feelgood music: cheesy love songs. Sitting on a sofa with a packet of Maltesers and a box of Kleenex, bawling along to Celine Dion singing 'All By...

The truth about journalism is that almost none of it keeps.(Another Voice)
August 14, 2004... Unless I am much mistaken, obituarists and tribute-writers have this week been poring over the Fleet Street archives, beset by a difficulty as unexpected as it has been puzzling. We have been looking for brilliant, extended passages of the late...

Pole position.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
August 14, 2004... Sir: As Simon Heifer says ('It's time to move on', 7 August), there is no earthly reason why Britain should apologise to Poland for not doing more to help the Poles during the Warsaw uprising. Nor could Britain's ally the United States have...

Black misgivings.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
August 14, 2004... Sir: Whatever may or may not have appeared in the Telegraph Group titles about 'the affairs of Lord Black', it is absurd for Stephen Glover (Media, 7 August) to claim that journalists here have neither remarked upon them nor passed on our...

A greed-fuelled war.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
August 14, 2004... Sir: Anthony Browne in his scholarly alert against the fundamentalism of Islam and its ambition to conquer the world ('The triumph of the East', 24 July) claims that Christianity in the past has shown the same motivation as Islam but in modern...

We need the CFP.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
August 14, 2004... Sir: I was surprised that my Conservative shadow, Owen Paterson, in his otherwise admirable review of the excellent book on fishing by the Telegraph's environment editor Charles Clover (Books, 31 July), tried to co-opt Clover to the Tory cause...

They're at it again!(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
August 14, 2004... Sir: O God, here we go again, I did not at any time 'review... a show [I] hadn't actually seen' for the Daily Express (Arts, 7 August). What I did was to preview a show by Barbara Cook which I had seen many, many times in New York and...

Waxing Christianity.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
August 14, 2004... Sir: 'Of course,' says William J. Abbot (Letters, 31 July), 'Belloc had no way of knowing that by the 21st century Christianity would be well on the way to becoming a dead religion, thereby creating the vacuum into which Islam's revival is...

Don't you tu-toi me, thou impudent fellow!(And Another Thing)
August 14, 2004... Recently Stephen Bates of the Guardian rebuked me for having Herbert Sutcliffe address the young Len Hutton in demotic speech, on the grounds that Sutcliffe had acquired a posh accent. It is true that his family was upwardly mobile. His dad,...

The Bank cashiers the grand old Duke, and plays footsteps with Granny Gordon.(City And Suburban)
August 14, 2004... The Bank of England has sacked the grand old Duke of York. New wars bring new methods, and it now bases its tactics on Grandmother's Footsteps. The Duke gave his name to the Bank's standard manoeuvre for setting interest rates. With a brisk cry...

Short on names, tall on tales.(Book Review)
August 14, 2004... THE BIG HOUSE by Christopher Simon Sykes HarperCollins, 20 [pounds sterling], pp. 420, ISBN 0007107099 Two or three years ago, I was invited with my rather posh then girlfriend to a grand party up in Yorkshire somewhere, and we were...

The return of the native.(Book Review)
August 14, 2004... THE PROMISE OF HAPPINESS by Justin Cartwright Bloomsbury, 16.99 [pounds sterling], pp. 307, ISBN 0747570345 'When you look at families, there is no such thing as normal.' Indeed not. Justin Cartwright gives us the Judds, an apparently...

A selection of recent paperbacks.
August 14, 2004... Non-fiction: Stalin by Simon Sebag Montefiore (Phoenix, 9.99 [pounds sterling]) John Clare by Jonathan Bate (Picador, 9.99 [pounds sterling]) The Affair of the Poisons by Anne Somerset (Phoenix, 8.99 [pounds sterling]) The...

The pros and cons of Euromarriage.(Book Review)
August 14, 2004... FREE WORLD: WHY A CRISIS OF THE WEST REVEALS THE OPPORTUNITY OF OUR TIME by Timothy Garton Ash Penguin/Allen Lane, 17.99 [pounds sterling], pp. 320, ISBN 0712997648 Timothy Garton Ash has become a bishop. In Free World, he has written...

The dark side of laughter.(Book Review)
August 14, 2004... THE SECRET PURPOSES by David Baddiel Little, Brown, 16.99 [pounds sterling], pp. 320, ISBN 0316859311 As a rule, I disapprove of reviews which review the author and not the book, but some occasions demand it. The British, I don't know why,...

Great--but uneven like the Andes.(Book Review)
August 14, 2004... PABLO NERUDA: A PASSION FOR LIFE by Adam Feinstein Bloomsbury, 25 [pounds sterling], pp. 497, ISBN 0747571929 Pablo Neruda had three houses in Chile the most lovely of them at La Isla Negra, on the Pacific coast near Valparaiso. This house...

'Thou, silent form, doth tease us out of thought'.(Book Review)
August 14, 2004... THE MYSTERY OF THE PORTLAND VASE by Robin Brooks Duckworth, 14.99 [pounds sterling], pp. 234, ISBN 0715632116 One February day in 1845 a well-dressed young man walked into Gallery Nine of the British Museum and hurled a lump of sculpture at...

Vanity fair and foul.(Book Review)
August 14, 2004... ROUGH COPY: PERSONAL TERMS 2 by Frederic Raphael Carcanet, 14.95 [pounds sterling], pp. 213, ISBN 1857546571 The plumber came this morning--75 [pounds sterling] including VAT. He was still expensively engaged when a bike brought Frederic...

Delusions and delights.(Book Review)
August 14, 2004... THE EYE OF LOVE by Margery Sharp Virago Modern Classics, 7.99 [pounds sterling], pp. 222, ISBN 1844080307 Disney hijacked Margery Sharp. The novelist, who died in 1991, is remembered chiefly for her series of (now animated) children's...

A fastidious disdain of poetry.(Book Review)
August 14, 2004... WILLIAM COLDSTREAM by Bruce Laughton Yale, 30 [pounds sterling], pp. 355, ISBN 0300102437 If William Coldstream (1909-87) was a dull painter, as he is sometimes thought to be, he was most certainly not a dull man. An artist who spent much...

Postcards from the South Seas: Andrew Lambirth on an exhibition by the gifted but underrated landscape painter William Hodges.(Arts)
August 14, 2004... If you consult The Yale Dictionary of Art & Artists on the subject of William Hodges, the brief entry will inform you that he was a British landscape painter, pupil of Richard Wilson 'and his most accomplished imitator', and that not finding...