Spectator articles from August 2007

Spectator archives from August 2007

Brown's Darfur triumph is also his test.(Gordon Brown's sending of peacekeeping mission to Sudan)
August 4, 2007... Those who have exchanged fierce views on the invasion of Iraq have a fresh challenge this week: how to react to the UN resolution, tabled by Gordon Brown and Nicolas Sarkozy with support from George W. Bush, to send 19,000 peacekeeping troops...

Diary.(travelling to Canada)
August 4, 2007... I'm in Canada, three hours north of Toronto, up in the great wilderness. Well, wilderness with lattes if I'm being totally honest. I'm on Lake Joe, one of the three Muskoka lakes that are a little bit to Toronto as are the Hamptons to...

Reasons for Mr Cameron to be cheerful as the summer holidays begin.(POLITICS)(David Cameron)
August 4, 2007... Gordon Brown will not holiday abroad this summer. Not for him the allure of a Tuscan palace or the sunbeds of Sharm el-Sheikh. The Prime Minister has instead created perfect happiness inside his home in Fife: a room wired up to the 10 Downing...

The spectator's notes.
August 4, 2007... Enoch Powell once said to me, 'I love the humbug of the English. I worship it. But I reserve the right from time to time to point it out.' I thought of this last week when I took part in Radio 4's Any Questions?, set up in the nave of...

Diary of a notting hill nobody.
August 4, 2007... MONDAY I can't take much more of this. Even Daddy says I need a holiday and our family motto is 'Don't Make a Fuss' (it sounds better in Latin). It's just unbearable, non-stop horridness. Every time we think we've got on top of it...

On the road with Gordon in the search for hearts and minds: Matthew d'Ancona joins the new prime minister on his first big international trip, to Camp David and the United Nations, and learns how he plans to reshape the British battle against terror into a 'counter-insurgency' strategy.
August 4, 2007... It was a gamble, more than Gordon Brown's aides had cared to admit. Every last detail of the new Prime Minister's press conference at Camp David had been planned, from the tone of the Prime Minister's voice to the colour of his tie. The...

Mind your language.(using the word "vast")
August 4, 2007... After al-Qa'eda's no. 2 said that Britain would be attacked for knighting Salman Rushdie, Iran's Grand Ayatollah Saanei chipped in on Sky News: 'When your Queen awards Salman Rushdie and turns him into a knight, what do you expect? This is a...

A major defeat in the war to defend the free world: Melanie Phillips reveals new evidence suggesting that Hamas was behind the kidnapping of Alan Johnston, whose release has been a propaganda victory for the Islamists.
August 4, 2007... Shortly after the release of Alan Johnston from Gaza the website of Conflicts Forum, a group advocating engagement with Islamists and which is run by the former MI6 officer Alastair Crooke, posted a fascinating transcript. Under the title...

Ancient & modern.(British and Roman public finance management )
August 4, 2007... Apparently Gordon is planning another tax raid on savings, this time life-insurance companies which have 'too much' money in reserve against rainy days. After his last pension raid, this will not be a popular move. The Romans can help him solve...

Why Europe may soon split along religious lines: Stephen Pollard says that if embryonic stem cell research is banned in some parts of Europe--as it might be under the new EU treaty--old hostilities will resurface.
August 4, 2007... I wouldn't care to estimate how many words have been written so far on the draft EU reform treaty. If and when it becomes a legal document, the English language will have been near exhausted for new terms to express the fundamental theme of...

Wired, retired and so hip it hurts: oldies have taken to the digital age, says Amelia Torode, and so have their grandchildren. It's the middle-aged professionals who fear and resent it.
August 4, 2007... Almost 200 years ago a grassroots movement began in Nottinghamshire close to Sherwood Forest--the Luddite movement. The Luddites wreaked havoc for a short but intense period of time in a vain attempt to hold back the tides of technological...

I don't mean to sneer, but which is more important: equality or inclusion? Rod Liddle is shocked by a recruitment ad for an Olympics quango--and the evidence it offers that Britain is being bombarded by vapid, deluded and meaningless pieties.
August 4, 2007... Like a good many of you, I imagine, I was worried that hosting the 2012 Olympic Games in London might send out the wrong sort of message, especially to our young people. The games have traditionally been an appallingly elitist and singularly...

English lessons.(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
August 4, 2007... Sir: Graham Lord ('Is it a tough ask to speak proper English?', 28 July) gives a clue to the increase in use of bad English when he points out that recent immigrants from eastern Europe speak our language much better than many of our own young...

Made in America.(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
August 4, 2007... Sir: I am concerned that our two new aircraft carriers are to be equipped with US-supplied aircraft and Chinook helicopters, while the future replacement for the Royal Navy's Trident submarine-borne ICBSs will also depend on US-supplied...

Mosque meeting.(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
August 4, 2007... Sir: I was astonished to read the article by Tom Gallagher last week ('The SNP is playing a deadly game with Islam'), which is an ill-informed and offensive rant against Scotland's Muslim community and government for pursuing an inclusive...

Munchausen's muddle.(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
August 4, 2007... Sir: Rod Liddle ('Wakefield is probably wrong about MMR', 21 July) admits to 'limited medical knowledge' and then proves it in an astonishing and disturbing way, for it seems he has completely misunderstood the nature of Munchausen's by Proxy....

Not the only fruit.(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
August 4, 2007... Sir: It's good to scoff at the EU, but can there be an end to the vexatious and piffling insistence that the tomato is a fruit (Letters, 28 July)? Botanically speaking it is, but so are chillies, capsicums, French beans, aubergines, courgettes...

The promise Boris must make if he is to become mayor of London.(ANOTHER VOICE)(Boris Johnson)
August 4, 2007... Boris Johnson could make a great Conservative candidate for the London mayoralty, and a great mayor of London. But he'll need to get the pitch right. I'm afraid the first thing he'll have to do is steer well clear of The Spectator. This...

Thinking of becoming a cartoonist in today's Britain? Think again.(AND ANOTHER THING)
August 4, 2007... The cartoonist Vicky (Victor Weisz, 1913-66) fled to London not long after the Reichstag fire, with the Gestapo at his heels. Had he not possessed a Hungarian passport he would never have got away, for as the boy wonder of Berlin political...

Rare stamps in a class of their own: Joanna Pitman advises investors who are wary of turbulent stock markets to investigate the world of philately, where values have risen steadily for 50 years.(BUSINESS)
August 4, 2007... Stamps, it is said, are the most valuable commodity on earth by weight. An 1868 Benjamin Franklin stamp, for example--a standard-sized stamp weighing a fraction of a fraction of a gram--was bought recently for $2.97 million by an American...

A healthy enthusiasm for danger.(Suffer and Survive: Gas Attacks, Miners' Canaries, Spacesuits, and the Bends - The Extreme Life of J.S. Haldane)(Book review)
August 4, 2007... SUFFER AND SURVIVE: GAS ATTACKS, MINERS' CANARIES, SPACESUITS AND THE BENDS--THE EXTREME LIFE OF J.S. HALDANE by Martin Goodman Simon & Schuster, 14.99 [pounds sterling], pp. 422, ISBN 9780743285971 [telephone] 11.99 [pounds sterling] (plus...

The invisible woman.(The Ordeal of Elizabeth Marsh: A Woman in World History)(Book review)
August 4, 2007... THE ORDEAL OF ELIZABETH MARSH: A WOMAN IN WORLD HI STORY by Linda Colley HarperPress, 25 [pounds sterling], pp. 363, ISBN 9780007192182 [telephone] 20 [pounds sterling] (plus 2.45 [pounds sterling] p&p) 0870 429 6655 Elizabeth Marsh was an...

The school of hard knocks.(Life Class)(Book review)
August 4, 2007... LIFE CLASS by Pat Barker Hamish Hamilton, 16.99 [pounds sterling], pp. 248, ISBN 9780241142974 [telephone] 13.59 [pounds sterling] (plus 2.45 [pounds sterling] p&p) 0870 429 6655 The Slade of the years immediately before the first world war...

Dark heart of the deep south.(End Games)(Book review)
August 4, 2007... END GAMES by Michael Dibdin Faber, 12.99 [pounds sterling], pp. 335, ISBN 9780571236152 [telephone] 10.39 [pounds sterling] (plus 2.45 [pounds sterling] p&p) 0870 429 6655 Last March, after an unexpected illness, Michael Dibdin died at his...

Making the stones speak.(Farewell Britannia: A Family Saga of Roman Britain )(Book review)
August 4, 2007... FAREWELL BRITANNIA: A FAMILY SAGA OF ROMAN BRITAIN by Simon Young Weidenfeld, 16.99 [pounds sterling], pp. 286, ISBN 9780297852261 [telephone] 13.59 [pounds sterling] (plus 2.45 [pounds sterling] p&p) 0870 429 6655 The current must-see...

'Keep all on gooing'.(LIFE & LETTERS)(advice for novelists)
August 4, 2007... Francis King's new novel was published a few weeks ago. Nothing, you may say, remarkable about that. He is among the most professional of authors; writing novels is what he does. Well, yes, of course, but it is certainly worth remarking that...

Littlestone days.(LIFE & LETTERS)(Poem)(Brief article)
August 4, 2007... Littlestone Days After the golf, the bridge and the cocktails, after the sets of tennis with Noel Coward and the Maughams looking on from the balcony, 'Ah, the dear boys!' after sherry and theatricals, the...

Brimming over with music: classical, Indian, jazz and much more: you name it, Henrietta Bredin found it at Dartington.(ARTS)(60th Dartington International Summer School at the Dartington College of Arts)
August 4, 2007... 'Hello, Gavin. Have you got the sackbuts with you?' Administrative magician Rebecca Rickard is dealing with what is, for her, a fairly ordinary sort of phone call in the greater scheme of things. As it turns out, Gavin (Henderson) has indeed...

Birth of the seaside.(Exhibitions 1)(Impressionists by the Sea exhibition)
August 4, 2007... Impressionists by the Sea Royal Academy until 30 September Sponsored by Farrow & Ball If we must have frequent Impressionist exhibitions, and it's clear from the public's insatiable appetite for them that we must, then at least let's have...

Fount of all gardens.(Exhibitions 2)(The Antique Garden from Babylon to Rome exhibit)
August 4, 2007... The Antique Garden from Babylon to Rome Lemon House, Boboli Garden, Florence, until 28 October According to an Hellenic historian, Nebuchadnezzar built the Hanging Gardens of Babylon in the 6th century BC to make his wife, who was from a...

Boundless passion.(Opera)(L'Amore dei tre Re)(Opera review)
August 4, 2007... L'Amore dei tre Re Opera Holland Park Macbeth Proms, Albert Hall Montemezzi's L'amore dei tre Re has had a puzzling history. It was first performed at La Scala in 1913 and was quite successful; far more successful under Toscanini at...

Wordless wonders.(Theatre)(Theater review)
August 4, 2007... Playing God Soho The Family Hackney Empire The Agent Trafalgar Studio A strange night at the Soho. Before curtain-up the place was crowded with people excitedly conversing with each other yet there was practically no noise. They...

How to feel young again.(Olden but golden)(attending the Guilfest music festival)
August 4, 2007... The older I become, the easier I find it to sink into that old-gittish state of believing everything has got worse with the passage of time. In my childhood there was the hippie movement, when young people felt that peace and love and...

Midnight's children.(Radio)(Crossing the Border and Woman's Hour serial adapting Vikas Swarup's novel)
August 4, 2007... Yet another rash of programmes has erupted marking the anniversary of yet another of Britain's disastrous foreign policy decisions. At midnight on 14 August it will be 60 years since Nehru, as the prime minister of newly independent India,...

Misleading the public.(Television)
August 4, 2007... I was fascinated to watch the low-key struggle the other day between BBC and ITV executives, and members of the Commons culture committee. The television people said they were appalled by the chicanery revealed in various...

Ascot shows its class.(The turf)
August 4, 2007... The late Jim Callaghan told a few of us one day about life in the House of Lords after being an MP in the Commons. 'In the Commons you wonder if you'll survive the next election. In the Lords you wonder if you'll live until Christmas.' On his...

Dog days of summer.(High life)(travelling in the Mediterranean)
August 4, 2007... On board S/Y Bushido Sailing away from St Tropez, I felt a bit like Lot; I asked the wife to take one last look, but Alexandra, alas, remained unsalty and very much in command. Portofino was the next stop, probably the most beautiful of...

Homicidal urges.(Low life)(not drinking)
August 4, 2007... During the wettest July since records began, I was completely dry. As usual, not drinking made me angry and withdrawn. As usual, I had homicidal urges and couldn't read. And, as usual, cleaning and polishing was the only way I could distract...

View from the high ground.(Letter from Arcadia)
August 4, 2007... It was, I think, Governor Winthrop, one of the founders of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, who said that politicians must think of themselves as a house on a hill. I have never been sure if he meant that they had the advantage of being...

Dramatic move.(Bridge)(Barry Westra's strategy)(Brief article)
August 4, 2007... From readable junk to real literature. Last week, as I mentioned, I was reading The Diana Chronicles; this week I moved on to Richard Yates's 1961 masterpiece Revolutionary Road. Like many before me, I was bowled over: here was a novelist whose...

Sick a-hoy! Henry Sands defies his past experience and prepares to set sail again.(STYLE AND TRAVEL)
August 4, 2007... I am not a sailor, but a couple of years ago I was invited to help crew a racing yacht across the Atlantic. The voyage home took 27 days, and I spent 26 of them hanging off the back of the boat throwing up. 'I suggest you never set foot on...

Staunton remembered.(CHESS)(Howard Staunton)
August 4, 2007... Howard Staunton was the Victorian polymath who became unofficial world champion in chess, as well as writing the history of the British public school system and producing a collector's item edition of the works of Shakespeare. For the past four...

Ode worthy.(COMPETITION)(poems for something ugly)(Poem)
August 4, 2007... In Competition No. 2505 you were asked to supply the first 16 lines of an ode to something ugly. When I set this assignment I was thinking of Pablo Neruda and his odes to subjects as apparently mundane as a lemon, a tomato and 'a large...

Snap shots.(SPECTATOR SPORT)(Patrick Eagar covering cricket test matches)
August 4, 2007... Always keen to buff up its romantic aura, Lord's this summer inaugurated a 'tradition' by nominating a different cricketing notable to toll the umpires' bell before each day's play. At last week's Test an old friend did the honours, fittingly...

Dear Mary.(YOUR PROBLEMS SOLVED)
August 4, 2007... Q. I was recently a weekend guest at a very large house. A series of unfortunate incidents meant I arrived at the house with no cash to leave for the cleaner at the end of the weekend. There were no cashpoints for miles around and to ask my...

The disease and us.(response to foot and mouth disease outbreak)
August 11, 2007... Given the boost in the opinion polls enjoyed by Gordon Brown following the recent floods, a cynic might wonder whether the outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease in Surrey has been staged in order to give the Prime Minister an excuse to break off...

Diary.(Xining, China)
August 11, 2007... Xining, Qinghai province, China What is up with the once superb Blue Guide that it fails to so much as mention beautiful Qinghai province, up in China's northwest? Here a lively mix of minorities make up 46 per cent of the population....

Brown has handled the crises well, but let's not forget he is to blame for many of them.(POLITICS)(Gordon Brown)
August 11, 2007... There has been something almost Biblical about the challenges which Gordon Brown has had to contend with since moving into 10 Downing Street. It started with the curiously unseasonal weather, which plunged London into darkness one July...

The Spectator's notes.
August 11, 2007... We are paying now for the lack of a single, comprehensive inquiry into the great foot-and-mouth outbreak of 2001. We were unprepared. Although foot-and-mouth information notices were first posted on 4 July, there was confusion when the Surrey...

The West is running a protectionist racket against the developing world: Ross Clark says that President Bush's grand summit on global warming next month will be aimed at assuaging Western guilt--while stifling the efforts of poor nations to match our living standards.(George W. Bush )
August 11, 2007... On 27 September, President George W. Bush will finally come in from the cold over global warming. On that day he will host a conference in Washington to be attended by what he has defined as the world's 15 most polluting nations. He intends,...

Flash Gordon.(Gordon Brown )(Cartoon)
August 11, 2007... Stand-up Comic 'And where America is enterprising but not today seen as fair, the rest of Europe more socially cohesive but not today seen as enterprising, I believe that we in Britain can even amid the pressures and insecurities of...

Why we are in Afghanistan for the long haul: David Miliband, reflecting on his recent trip, says that we must stay the course to protect our security and honour, and explains why Afghanistan will always be at the heart of his global policy.
August 11, 2007... The phrase 'think global, act local' originated in the environmental movement. It can be a glib substitute for serious attention to large problems. But it can also be a telling rejoinder to the temptations of top-down, big-government solutions....

'Some say Bill Clinton's running for a third term': Gavin Esler has been talking to Bob Dole and other Washington insiders about the Clintons and finds that it's still 'buy one, get one free'.
August 11, 2007... When you enter the offices of the Great and the Good in Washington--or even the Not so Great and Not so Good--you always find an Ego Wall. Senator Trufflebacker's Ego Wall will have photographs of himself at Nasa with the astronauts, a signed...

Global warning.(shoplifting)
August 11, 2007... You--or perhaps it would be more accurate to say I--can't get away anywhere from crime and criminality. I was walking down a country lane in one of the most beautiful shires of England. The sun was shining, the birds were singing, the...

Now we know: Brown is a European, not an Atlanticist: Irwin Stelzer says the Prime Minister has traded the special relationship for a home within an autocratic EU--and that Britain may be replaced in Washington's affections by France.(Gordon Brown, European Union)
August 11, 2007... There is little doubt, as Matthew d'Ancona and others have pointed out, that Gordon Brown is secure in the thought that he has established himself as what is called these days a 'change agent', cutting the ground out from Tory cries that 'It's...

Mind your language.
August 11, 2007... The songs did not go, 'Keep right on to the road's end' or 'The railroad runs through the house's middle', but there is now a vogue for using the inflected genitive with inanimate objects. Ordinarily you may speak of Dr Foster's middle but not...

The irony and the ecstasy of Lady Mary Clive: Harry Mount talks to the lone survivor of an extraordinary brood of writers on the eve of her 100th birthday, and hears about her friendship with John Betjeman and Ian Fleming.(Interview)
August 11, 2007... Deep in a remote valley on the edge of the Black Mountains sits one of the last great witnesses of the 20th century. Lady Mary Clive, who turns 100 on 23 August, shook Kitchener's hand before the first world war, and heard firsthand accounts of...

Bergman, Antonioni and the end of an error: Toby Young says that the old art-house directors were the masters of impenetrable, left-wing gobbledegook and that the true artists were Ford, Capra and Hitchcock.(Ingmar Bergman, Michelangelo Antonioni, John Ford, Frank Capra, Alfred Hitchcock)
August 11, 2007... Sixteen years ago I got together with a group of like-minded friends and started a magazine called The Modern Review. Its premise was that popular culture is as worthy of serious critical attention as high culture and, to that end, we...

Shambo's revenge: this is what happens when you mess with the gods: forget the conspiracy theories, says Rod Liddle: the latest outbreak of foot-and-mouth is the fault of the reckless Welsh farmers who insisted on the slaughter of that Hindu bull.(LIDDLE BRITAIN)
August 11, 2007... It took some of our farmers less than 24 hours after the first outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) last week to demand an immediate and comprehensive culling of Britain's ramblers, dogs, badgers, Defra vets, tourists, van drivers,...

Why's Brown so slow?(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
August 11, 2007... Sir: In his interesting and positive account of Gordon Brown's visit to America, Matthew d'Ancona reveals that Brown's thinking on the causes of terrorism has 'shifted' since the recent so-called Islamist 'doctors' plot' to set off car bombs...

The Melanie maze.(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
August 11, 2007... Sir: It's a pity Melanie Phillips didn't do the basic journalistic checks with us before going into print with her highly speculative article about Alan Johnston's kidnap ('A major defeat in the war to defend the free world', 4 August). ...

Science and conscience.(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
August 11, 2007... Sir: Stephen Pollard's commentary on the opt-out regarding certain medical scientific procedures seems to be an argument for an abandonment of all restrictions ('Why Europe may soon split along religious lines', 4 August). He apparently...

Adoption policy.(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
August 11, 2007... Sir: The difference between young early adopters and old ones is that young folks often adopt things (Facebook, for example, or iTunes) because it is currently fashionable whereas oldies like myself adopt things if and when they see a use for...

Why Gordon Brown's British holiday plans cast a dark cloud over Westminster.(SHARED OPINION)
August 11, 2007... If anybody actually welcomed the eventual death of British motor-car manufacturing last year, you can bet it was government ministers. For 30 years, theirs had been a lumpen unhappy world of Rovers and Vauxhalls, while every other executive in...

One last cigarette before the firing squad? Certainly not!(AND ANOTHER THING)(smoking)
August 11, 2007... I suppose in 100 years' time, perhaps much sooner, no one will smoke. So we will be back where we were before the 16th century, when adventurers like Raleigh brought the Red Indian habit of smoking tobacco to Europe. It was one of the points on...

The case for privatising Manchester airport: Graham Brady MP says Mancunians, unlike Londoners, are proud of their airport, but that its municipal ownership is a socialist anachronism--so why not sell it off?(BUSINESS)
August 11, 2007... It is 12 years since Tony Blair did battle with the socialist dinosaurs and forced them to abandon their commitment to nationalisation with his celebrated 'Clause 4 moment'--the very birth of New Labour. Now that Blair has been and gone, you...

And so to plot.(The Plot against Pepys)(Book review)
August 11, 2007... THE PLOT AGAINST PEPYS by James Long and Ben Long Faber, 17.99 [pounds sterling], pp. 322, ISBN 9780571227136 [telephone] 14.39 [pounds sterling] (plus 2.45 [pounds sterling] p&p) 0870 429 6655 There's a theory, no doubt implausible and...

Not forgetting the horses' indigestion.(World War One: A Short History)(Book review)
August 11, 2007... WORLD WAR ONE: A SHORT HISTORY by Norman Stone Allen Lane, 16.99 [pounds sterling], pp. 157, ISBN 9781846140136 [telephone] 13.59 [pounds sterling] (plus 2.45 [pounds sterling] p&p) 0870 429 6655 The appearance of this volume is an...

Mamet blows his own trumpet.(Bambi vs. Godzilla: On the Nature, Purpose, and Practice of the Movie Business)(Book review)
August 11, 2007... BAMBI VS GODZILLA: ON THE NATURE, PURPOSE AND PRACTICE OF THE MOVIE BUSINESS by David Mamet Simon & Schuster, 11.99 [pounds sterling], pp. 250, ISBN 9780743248396 [telephone] 9.59 [pounds sterling] (plus 2.45 [pounds sterling] p&p) 0870...

A gallery of pen portraits.(Cultural Amnesia: Notes in the Margin of My Time)(Book review)
August 11, 2007... CULTURAL AMNESIA: NOTES IN THE MARGIN OF MY TIME by Clive James Picador, 25 [pounds sterling], pp. 876, ISBN 9780330481748 [telephone] 20 [pounds sterling] (plus 2.45 [pounds sterling] p&p) 0870 429 6655 Trying to explain the limits of his...

Trusty steeds and saucy varlets.(Charlemagne and Roland)(Book review)
August 11, 2007... CHARLEMAGNE AND ROLAND by Allan Massie Weidenfeld, 12.99 [pounds sterling], pp. 232, ISBN 9780297850694 [telephone] 10.39 [pounds sterling] (plus 2.45 [pounds sterling] p&p) 0870 429 6655 Supposedly narrated by the scholar and Aristotelian...

Child of the New Forest.(Wildwood: A Journey Through Trees)(Book review)
August 11, 2007... WILDWOOD: A JOURNEY THROUGH TREES by Roger Deakin Hamish Hamilton, 20 [pounds sterling], pp. 391, ISBN 9780241141847 [telephone] 16 [pounds sterling] (plus 2.45 [pounds sterling] p&p) 0870 429 6655 Roger Deakin was a swimmer, old-fashioned...

He killed off Georgian style.(God's Architect: Pugin and the Building of Romantic Britain)(Book review)
August 11, 2007... GOD'S ARCHITECT: PUGIN AND THE BUILDING OF ROMANTIC BRITAIN by Rosemary Hill Penguin/Allen Lane, 30 [pounds sterling], pp. 416, ISBN 9780713994995 [telephone] 24 [pounds sterling] (plus 2.45 [pounds sterling] p&p) 0870 429 6655 Pugin is...

Move over, Monet-maniacs: Mark Glazebrook argues for abstract painting to be studied with the same fervour as Impressionism.(ARTS)(Claude Monet)
August 11, 2007... On 30 January 1999, not long after the Royal Academy had mounted its second Monet exhibition, The Spectator published my first exhibition review. It was about a renewal of Cubism in the sculpture of Ivor Abrahams and began as follows: 'The end...

Artistic harmony.(Exhibitions)(Georges de la Tour: Master of Candlelight)
August 11, 2007... Georges de la Tour: Master of Candlelight; The Shadow Compton Verney, Warwickshire, until 9 September If you are planning a holiday visit to Shakespeare country and fancy a change of mood and visual pace from the usual round of sightseeing...

Musical gazumping.(Music)(making music exciting)
August 11, 2007... Why do people spend their lives doing something which makes them nervous, even to the point of making them sick? I have watched musicians go on stage so frightened that it has been obvious to everyone present that they could not possibly be...

Dying of love.(Tristan und Isolde )(Opera review)
August 11, 2007... Tristan und Isolde Glyndebourne 'I fear the opera will be banned--unless the whole thing is parodied in a bad performance--: only mediocre performances can save me! Perfectly good ones will be bound to drive people mad,--I cannot imagine...

Perils of Poddery.(Pop)(using iPods)
August 11, 2007... Oh, to be an Early Adopter. They are the marketing man's friends. Early Adopters buy only the latest thing, they are up to the minute, maybe even up to the second, these crazed opinion-formers whose reckless compulsion to spend all their money...

Unenchanted evening.(plays)(Theater review)
August 11, 2007... The Enchantment Cottesloe Absurdia Donmar In the Club Hampstead When the public ignores a playwright, it's not because the public is wrong but because the playwright deserves to be ignored. Director Paul Miller and translator...

Voices of protest.(Radio)(Power to the People, Science Friction)(Radio program review)
August 11, 2007... It was a bit surprising to find a programme marking the 62nd anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on Radio Two (Tuesday), not Radio Four. The stations are changing, morphing into each other as they seek ever more urgently to...

Not-so-fresh viewing.(Television)(cooking programs)(Television program review)
August 11, 2007... 'I'm sure I've read this before,' said the Fawn, skimming through my review of Heroes in the week-before-last's Speccie. 'You can't have done, we were away when it came out,' I said. 'Well, it seems very familiar,' she said. 'That'll be...

The fast Fifties.(Motoring)(Facel Vega cars)
August 11, 2007... 'I saw Eternity the other night,' wrote the 17th-century religious poet Henry Vaughan, arrestingly combining the numinous and the mundane. 'I drove a Facel Vega the other day' may not be quite as evocative, but in automotive terms it's not much...

Marina madness.(High life)(conditions at the Sardinia marina, Porto Cervo Yacht Club )
August 11, 2007... On board S/Y Bushido I changed my mind about going to Capri. Apparently no heterosexuals are allowed on the island during August, so I turned to starboard and headed for Sardinia. The last time I was there I was in my early fifties, my...

Dummy's view.(Bridge)(Brief article)
August 11, 2007... Sometimes it's hard to see things from a point of view other than your own--and that's just as true in bridge as in life. It's one of the marks of an expert to be able to put himself in his opponent's place--to imagine how a certain card or...