Spectator articles from August 2008

Spectator archives from August 2008

Leader of the lemmings.(Gordon Brown)
August 2, 2008... So madly introspective and self-obsessed has Labour become that it seems almost impolite to intrude upon its private agonies. Yet since the party is still notionally governing the nation it is our duty to knock on the door, and ask what all the...

Diary.(Personal account)
August 2, 2008... Every six months the tabloid press shakes its pudgy fist in ecstatic indignation over some new film (usually French and about as offensive as a French actress's unveiled breasts). Last week, it was a British film called Donkey Punch which...

The Spectator's notes.(Column)
August 2, 2008... When David and Samantha Cameron appeared in the newspapers on Monday, photographed on the beach at Harlyn Bay in Cornwall, it was a 'defining moment'. For the first time in our history, a British political leader has clearly benefited from a...

[Cartoon].(Cartoon)
August 2, 2008... Somewhere on the Suffolk coast in an exclusive convalescent home... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] That's nice--some of my Cabinet are coming to visit me! Indeed they are... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Remember, Miliband, this has...

Diary of a Notting Hill nobody.(Column)
August 2, 2008... Monday V nerve-wracking weekend. Thought I was going to get the sack for leaving the mike on during Dave's meeting with Mr Obama. Wrote a long email of apology to Gary cc Nigel for accidentally forgetting to tell the ABC cameraman that it...

'There is nothing saying Labour will ever win power again': the choice facing the governing party is between defeat and annihilation, says Fraser Nelson. For now, Labour is mired in 'division without decision' as Jack Straw, David Miliband and others wait to see who--if anyone--will wield the knife against Gordon Brown.
August 2, 2008... The catalpa trees in New Palace Yard are in bloom, a glorious heatwave has struck London. Yet dark despair is curling through the core of the Labour party. From Cabinet level to the rank and file, there is a hardening awareness that for Gordon...

What does the future hold for Labour?--a Spectator poll.(Brief article)
August 2, 2008... The Spectator asked 100 men and women from central London five crucial questions about Gordon Brown and the future of government. Though the sample was too small to be scientific, the results had the ring of truth. Yes, 82 people thought...

Flash Gordon.(Cartoon)
August 2, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] 'They say terrible things about him and the worst of it is they're all true.' (sic)

The tightrope walk and the terrorists: Sarfraz Manzoor talks to Philippe Petit, whose stunning walk between the Twin Towers in 1974 is the subject of a new film--and discovers the mirror image of the horrors of 9/11.(Man on Wire)(Interview)
August 2, 2008... It was one small step, but for Philippe Petit it was to be a giant leap into immortality. The date was 7 August 1974, the location New York City and the 24-year-old Frenchman was standing on the top of one of the Twin Towers of the World Trade...

It is commercial television that is really in peril: Channel 4 can't afford Carol Vorderman and says it needs more cash for its public service remit. Nonsense, writes Neil Midgley: it is mass-market television that needs help.
August 2, 2008... Carol Vorderman has, apparently, become too expensive for Channel 4's game show Countdown. Gone are the carefree days when Channel 4 could afford to poach Paul O'Grady from ITV to chase teatime ratings. Now, says C4 chief executive Andy Duncan,...

Mind your language.(Column)
August 2, 2008... After Padraig Harrington gave an interview to the Today programme the other day, Evan Davis, the presenter, commented that he had never heard the phrase 'amn't I' before. Perhaps he has not been to Ireland. The Oxford English Dictionary...

Jordan would have raised the tone at the polo: Venetia Thompson says that the pneumatic model--banned from the key enclosures--is no more of a 'chav' than the punters who throng at these increasingly vulgar events.(Cartier International Polo)(Personal account)
August 2, 2008... 'What would we do/ usually drink, usually dance, usually bubble/All I want to do is tell you I love you/ That's when I start promising the world to/ A brand new girl I don't even know yet/ Next thing she's wearing my Rolex.' The sun has...

In Cyprus, warm words conceal dark intentions: don't be misled by the notional amicability between North and South, says John Torode. Many Cypriots believe that Turkey is determined to annex the North, with our tacit approval.
August 2, 2008... Something is stirring on Aphrodite's Isle. For the first time since Turkey seized Northern Cyprus in 1974, thousands of Greek and Turkish Cypriots, forcibly segregated for decades, are in amicable daily contact across the great divide. The new...

On Colombian 'democracy'.(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
August 2, 2008... Sir: Tristan Garel-Jones's article misrepresents Justice for Colombia's work by implying a common agenda with the Farc ('The day I was kidnapped', 12 July). JFC works to defend human rights in Colombia. We were the only British...

Councils are accountable.(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
August 2, 2008... Sir: Rod Liddle often entertains us, but his tirade against local government (Liddle Britain, 26 July) was an undoubted masterpiece of missing the point. He is quite entitled to dislike the decisions taken by local councils across the...

Took's demonisation.(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
August 2, 2008... Sir: It is a pity Mr Hall did not read my article ('The Establishment paedophile: how a monster hid in high society', 12 July) with particular care, having berated me for suggesting Roger Took would. If he had, he would know that I did not use...

Brown in power.(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
August 2, 2008... Sir: The slow-burn political death of our sub-Prime Minister reminds me of a passage in Tacitus Histories [1.49], regarding the short rein of the Emperor Galba who came to power in 68AD and was murdered by his praetorian guard (who else?) in...

Lying about the dead.(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
August 2, 2008... Sir: Geoffrey Wheatcroft's musings on funeral addresses (Diary, 26 July) reminded me of my own late father, a Spectator reader for as long as I can remember. He left strict instructions that there should be no eulogies at his own funeral, as he...

The really irrational thing once you have faith is to entertain reasonable doubts.(ANOTHER VOICE)(Column)
August 2, 2008... Until recently I never realised that triangulation had entered theology as well as politics. But listening to Thought for the Day on BBC radio the other day, it struck me that modern churchmen, too, are triangulating the deepest question of all...

Getting beneath the skin of the tickling phenomenon.(AND ANOTHER THING)(Column)
August 2, 2008... 'We can cause laughing by tickling the skin,' wrote Darwin in Emotions (1872). We all know that. Difficulties arise when we probe a little deeper, where tickling hovers uncertainly on the borderline between eroticism, buffoonery and the slow,...

Rumours of the death of music are exaggerated: David Crow says the record industry's attempt to clamp down on illegal downloads is belated and befuddled--but the good news is that live music is thriving again.(BUSINESS)
August 2, 2008... Back in the late 1990s when the music download revolution was gathering pace, sentimentalists predicted the death of music. Those who spent their youth in rented flats littered with LPs before moving to mortgaged houses furnished with neat...

Cold beer, smiling people, stable growth: where Gordon should have gone on holiday.(CITY LIFE)(Vientiane, Laos)(City overview)
August 2, 2008... IN VIENTIANE Paul Theroux, in The Great Railway Bazaar, paints a louche portrait of the capital of Laos. 'The brothels are cleaner than the hostels, marijuana is cheaper than pipe tobacco and opium is easier to find than a cold glass of...

Not tired of this life.(Samuel Johnson: A Biography)(Book review)
August 2, 2008... SAMUEL JOHNSON: A BIOGRAPHY by Peter Martin Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 25 [pounds sterling], pp. 568, ISBN 9780297607199 [telephone] 20 [pounds sterling] (plus 2.45 [pounds sterling] p&p) 0870 429 6655 Thanks to Boswell's...

The net result.(Vermeer's Hat: The Seventeenth Century and the Dawn of the Global World)(Book review)
August 2, 2008... VERMEER'S HAT: THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY AND THE DAWN OF THE GLOBAL WORLD by Timothy Brook Profile, 18.99 [pounds sterling], pp. 272, ISBN 9781846681127 [telephone] 15.19 [pounds sterling] (plus 2.45 [pounds sterling] p&p) 0870 429...

The world at bay.(The Great Western Beach: A Memoir of a Cornish Childhood Between the Wars)(Book review)
August 2, 2008... THE GREAT WESTERN BEACH: A MEMOIR OF A CORNISH CHILDHOOD BETWEEN THE WARS by Emma Smith Bloomsbury, 14.99 [pounds sterling], pp. 384, ISBN 9780747595915 [telephone] 11.99 [pounds sterling] (plus 2.45 [pounds sterling] p&p) 0870...

Glimpses of past happiness.(My Father's Roses)(Book review)
August 2, 2008... MY FATHER'S ROSES by Nancy Kohner Hodder & Stoughton, 18.99 [pounds sterling], pp. 256, ISBN 9780340960240 [telephone] 15.19 [pounds sterling](plus 2.45 [pounds sterling] p&p) 0870 429 6655 What could be more poignant than...

Where statesmen and authors met.(The Kit-Cat Club: Friends Who Imagined a Nation)(Book review)
August 2, 2008... THE KIT-CAT CLUB: FRIENDS WHO IMAGINED A NATION by Ophelia Field Harper Press, 25 [pounds sterling], pp. 524, ISBN 9780007178926 [telephone] 20 [pounds sterling] (plus 2.45 [pounds sterling] p&p) 0870 429 6655 What a...

The invisible muses.(Hidden in the Shadow of the Master)(Book review)
August 2, 2008... HIDDEN IN THE SHADOW OF THE MASTER by Ruth Butler Yale University Press, 18.99 [pounds sterling], pp. 376, ISBN 9780300126242 [telephone] 15.19 [pounds sterling] (plus 2.45 [pounds sterling] p&p) 0870 429 6655 Hortense...

A country of ruins.(Children of the Revolution: The French, 1799-1914)(Book review)
August 2, 2008... CHILDREN OF THE REVOLUTION: THE FRENCH, 1799-1914 by Robert Gildea Allen Lane, 30 [pounds sterling], pp. 540, ISBN 9780713997606 [telephone] 24 [pounds sterling] (plus 2.45 [pounds sterling] p&p) 0870 429 6655 Contributers to...

Corruption, celebrity and confidence: Lloyd Evans talks to Matthew Bourne about his new ballet Dorian Gray and co-directing Oliver!(ARTS)(Interview)
August 2, 2008... Matthew Bourne is a whirlwind. He's a dynamo, a powerhouse, a force of nature. He has created the busiest ballet company on earth and turned Britain into the world's leading exporter of dance theatre. His breakthrough came in 1995 with an...

Emperor's vision.(Hadrian: Empire and Conflict exhibition)
August 2, 2008... Hadrian: Empire and Conflict The British Museum until 26 October Sponsored by BP After last week's Hadrian supplement in The Spectator, readers will be well-informed about this prince of emperors, so I will confine my remarks to a...

Spectacularly disappointing.('Spartacus', 'Giselle', 'La Halte de Cavalerie')(Dance review)
August 2, 2008... Mikhailovsky Ballet London Coliseum It is somewhat refreshing that the 2008 summer ballet season in London is not monopolised by either the Bolshoi or the Kirov/Mariinsky ballet companies as it has been for the past few years. The...

Three in the park.('La Gioconda', 'Pulcinella', 'Iolanta')(Theater review)(Dance review)(Opera review)
August 2, 2008... La Gioconda; Pulcinella; Iolanta Opera Holland Park On a hot fine evening in London there can't be anywhere more delightful for an opera-lover than Opera Holland Park, which is now so comfortable, and has such high standards of...

Mischief making.('The Female of the Species', 'Hangover Square', 'The Frontline')(Theater review)
August 2, 2008... The Female of the Species Vaudeville Hangover Square Finborough The Frontline Shakespeare's Globe A first-class Aussie bitch-fight has erupted over a new West End comedy. Joanna Murray-Smith's satire opens with a...

Not for terrestrials.(The X Files: I Want to Believe)(Movie review)
August 2, 2008... The X-Files: I Want to Believe 15, Nationwide OK, straight to the point, because we are busy people, right? And when we are not busy we are pretending to be busy, right? So, The X-Files: I Want to Believe, worth your time? No. As it...

Tables have turned.(Pop)(Column)
August 2, 2008... There's a rather wonderful new book out by a man named Travis Elborough, which sounds a bit like one of those dead Dorset villages where every second house is a holiday rental. Mr Elborough's previous book was a great thundering roar of...

Popular marriage.(Radio)('Evan and Nick Show', 'These Are the Times')(Radio program review)
August 2, 2008... Early mornings on Four have seen a miraculous appearance in the past fortnight with the emergence of the Evan and Nick Show. Not for years has there been a genuine double act on the Today programme; not since Brian Redhead and John Timpson in...

Riotous ride.(Television)('Lost Land of the Jaguar', 'House of Saddam', 'The Kevin Bishop Show')(Television program review)
August 2, 2008... A three-part series called Expedition Guyana was hurriedly retitled Lost Land of the Jaguar (BBC1, Wednesday) possibly in the hopes that viewers might think it was a spin-off from Top Gear, more likely because a BBC suit suddenly realised that...

Tough justice.(High life)(Column)
August 2, 2008... On board S/Y Bushido Around 20 years or so ago, Udai Hussein, Saddam's boy, had some of his heavies beat up a man who refused their master's invitation to join his table in a Geneva nightclub. The Iraqi wanted to meet the man's beautiful...

Take my hand.(Low life)(Column)
August 2, 2008... 'Gordon, can I have your autograph?' I said, offering pen and small notebook folded back at a new page. I'd butted into his conversation, but he swung round in his seat and smiled pleasantly up at me and took the pen and notebook and inscribed...

Devil may care.(Real life)(Column)
August 2, 2008... The really useful thing about relationship break-ups is that you get to eat up all the out-of-date stuff in the fridge without fear of food poisoning. It took me a while to work this out. There was I going around moaning, 'Oh, I want to die',...

Fishy business.(The table)(Column)
August 2, 2008... At a House of Commons cocktail party I suddenly noticed a friend's face contorted like 'The Scream' of Edvard Munch. Could it be yet more bad news for Labour? No, she was being offered a plate of smoked salmon, probably her thousandth munch for...

Small talk.(Bridge)(Brief article)(Column)
August 2, 2008... If bidding is a conversation, does it have to be only about your hand? I'm asking because I know of a pair who, when they were juniors, had unusual methods after they opened 1NT. They could raise straight to 3NT, but they could also use a relay...

The king-makers: James Sherwood apprises the Savile Row tailors who dress royalty.(STYLE)
August 2, 2008... Shortly before Christmas Mr Garry Carr, head of Gieves & Hawkes' military department, received a telephone call from the Tonga high commission in London to ask if His Majesty King George Tupou V could visit No 1 Savile Row to discuss uniform...

Howard's way.(CHESS)
August 2, 2008... Later this week the Staunton Memorial tournament commences at Simpson's-in-the-Strand. This year promises to be an exciting contest with Britain's top two grandmasters, Michael Adams and Nigel Short, both competing, as well as Bob Wade OBE,...

Last words.(COMPETITION)(Poem)
August 2, 2008... In Competition No 2555 you were invited to write a poem, short story or news report containing the line 'They couldn't hit an elephant from there'. The line, which I altered slightly to make versification easier, was uttered by General...

1875: whistle a happy tune.(CROSSWORD)(Brief article)
August 2, 2008... The unclued lights (one of two and one of three words), when arranged as three pairs and a quartet, are of a kind. Solvers are advised that the solutions at 7D and 8D will require an irregular style of entry to enable them to fit in with the...

What takes my breath away is the sheer anger of the comments under my articles.(STATUS ANXIETY)(Column)
August 2, 2008... There have been many wise and learned discussions about the impact the internet has had on journalism. However, one area that has been neglected is the impact it has had on the egos of journalists. I don't mean the bruised feelings that Matt...

Ancient & modern.(burial customs)(Column)
August 2, 2008... The recent exchange of the bodies of two Israeli soldiers for five living Hezbollah (and much else) has produced outrage in some sections of the Israeli press. Admittedly, it lays Israel open to further blackmail from Hezbollah who, glowing...

The top ten.(SPECTATOR SPORT)(soccer)(Column)
August 2, 2008... You need a PhD in astro-physics to work out what's going on in cricket at the moment, so time for some simpler fare. Here are 10 good reasons, and I know no sane person should be thinking about this right now, why the next football season could...

Dear Mary.(YOUR PROBLEMS SOLVED)(Column)
August 2, 2008... Q. I am sorry this is anonymous, but I volunteered to write on behalf of a good friend--call her Anna Finch--who is terrified at the prospect of being identified in the small conservative village where she has lived for a dozen years. Here is...

China in our hands.(Editorial)
August 9, 2008... For many people, watching the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics will be like trying to enjoy a party above the din of police cars taking away uninvited guests. However much you turn up the music, you can still hear the sirens: the...

Diary.(Personal account)
August 9, 2008... One of the great adventures of being an actor is filming abroad, when suddenly you have the opportunity not only to visit, but actually to work somewhere else; to feel temporarily part of another city's fabric rather than floating along its...

Relax, comrades: David Miliband is Blairesque, rather than Blairite.(POLITICS)
August 9, 2008... One Cabinet minister described it to me with dark wit as the 'Eden Project': the idea being that, after a summer of reflection, Gordon Brown is gently or not-so-gently persuaded to retire, in the manner of Anthony Eden, on the grounds of 'ill...

The Spectator's notes.
August 9, 2008... Alexander Solzhenitsyn has been rather belittled on his death. Not knowing any Russian, I cannot judge his prose style, but when people complain that he was unrelentingly serious, they are applying the wrong criteria. Solzhenitsyn was...

[Cartoon].(Cartoon)
August 9, 2008... Don't you think you're being rather premature? [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Diary of a Notting Hill nobody.(Column)
August 9, 2008... Monday Not happy. In fact I would say my GWB is at a record low. Among the deeply troubling unanswered questions I am wrestling with: Why was I not informed about Mr Simpson's holiday reading list? Who authorised it? And what's going to...

All these green taxes and rules are just witless nods to fashion: the measures on 'gas-guzzling' cars, policing of wheelie bins and surcharges on plastic bags are based on scientific fads and, often, the government's greed for taxpayers' money, says Rod Liddle. The Third World won't pay the price, and nor will big business--but we will.(Cover story)
August 9, 2008... Galatas, Greece For one weekend each year every beach in this peaceful part of the world is taken over by gypsies, and the locals (and the handful of Western tourists) steer well clear and lock up their possessions, daughters, etc. I...

Russia's ignorant still hate Solzhenitsyn: Owen Matthews says that the great literary prophet has been attacked on the internet by Russians who associate him with the collapse of the Soviet Union. The truth still hurts.(Alexander Solzhenitsyn)
August 9, 2008... In Russia, writers are more than just writers. Russians look to their literary heroes not simply for beauty and entertainment, but for a philosophy of life. Writers do more than simply tell the truth to the temporal power--they are Russia's...

'I'm not an ambassador for New Labour, I'm an MP': in the latest of his occasional series, Martin Rowson talks to Bob Marshall-Andrews, serial Labour rebel who had the entertaining cheek to accuse Miliband of disloyalty.(David Miliband, Minister of Parliament)(Interview)
August 9, 2008... When I came to play back the recording of my recent interview with Bob Marshall-Andrews, the serially rebellious Labour MP for Medway, for a second or two my blood ran cold. As I remembered it, while I'd been drawing him we'd had a wide-ranging...

A film that shows how gutless Britain has become: Michael Prescott--who was a passenger on the King's Cross train on 7/7--applauds a movie inspired by the terrorist attacks. But why is nobody keen to distribute it?(Shoot on Sight)(Movie review)
August 9, 2008... The world has an estimated 798 billionaires. Thousands more people are each worth hundreds of million. Any one of them is in a position to blow 8 million [pounds sterling] on a whim. Only one of them has decided to gamble that amount on a film...

Monty Python's guide to the Darfur conflict: the genocide publicised by movie stars is over, says Justin Marozzi. What must now be resolved is a civil war with unlimited breakaway factions--and Hollywood cannot help.(Darfur, Sudan)
August 9, 2008... It wasn't the gleaming black helicopter parked on Second Avenue that raised eyebrows. New Yorkers barely blink at such a routine form of transport. No, passersby were more taken by the improbable banner hanging from its tail: 'SEND ME TO...

Part-time heroes.(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
August 9, 2008... Sir: I noted with interest the article about 'lazy firemen' ('Britain's firefighters are underworked and inflexible', 26 July). I am Lincolnshire's Chief Fire Officer with more than 35 years' service, and though there was much truth in what...

Bird brained.(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
August 9, 2008... Sir: I was distressed to read Aidan Hartley's account in Wild life (26 July) of how he dealt with what was presumably a ground hornbill pecking at the window of his new house--'Tappetytappetytappety BANG!' These unique birds are listed as...

Online vitriol.(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
August 9, 2008... Sir: Toby Young is correct to expose the vitriol thrown at him by readers responding to his articles by email (Status anxiety, 2 August). He gives a few explanations as to why this is the case. I would add an extra one. The internet has...

Come friendly bombs.(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
August 9, 2008... Sir: Robert Beaumont neatly explains that Laos is a great place for buying suits and enjoying a pizza, but his comments about the American bombing of that country are ignorant and offensive (City life, 2 August). The people of Laos were...

Inappropriate levity.(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
August 9, 2008... Sir: Since my last visit to Beijing in 2006, when all with whom I had contact were later arrested, imprisoned and several tortured, I have been following the persecution of China's most popular qi gong movement, Falun Gong, which has more...

Russell was agnostic.(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
August 9, 2008... Sir: Matthew Parris refers to 'the atheist Bertrand Russell' (Another voice, 2 August). I clearly remember hearing Russell, on the radio, describe himself as an agnostic. Moreover, he refused to accept that 'cruelty is wrong' only means 'I...

The view from 2018: how it all went wrong for Prime Minister Osborne.(SHARED OPINION)(George Osborne)
August 9, 2008... So it was 2018 and the government was in trouble. Real trouble. In newspapers and magazines, on Dame Emily Maitlis's Newsnight and Davina McCall's Today programme, one question was being asked. Would anybody ever vote Conservative again? ...

Splendours and miseries of the Queen's English in the 21st century.(AND ANOTHER THING)(Column)
August 9, 2008... The wonderful thing about language, and especially English, with its enormous vocabulary, is the existence of groups of words with broadly similar meanings but each of which conveys something slightly different. Such subtle distinctions add to...

The end of Euro Disney's white-knuckle ride? After years of financial struggle, say Christian Sylt and Caroline Reid, the Paris theme park has finally found a path to profit--just as the European economy hits a downturn.(BUSINESS)(Paris, France)
August 9, 2008... Disney and happy endings go hand in hand. But after 16 years, shareholders in Disney's theme park near Paris are still waiting for their frog to complete its transformation into Prince Charming. In November, Euro Disney is set to announce its...

A master at work.(Lush Life )(Book review)
August 9, 2008... Lush Life by Richard Price Bloomsbury, 12.99 [pounds sterling], pp. 455, ISBN 9780747596011 [telephone] 10.39 [pounds sterling] (plus 2.45 [pounds sterling] p&p) 0870 429 6655 It's pretty seldom that, only a few pages into a novel,...

Nooks for rooks.('Crow Country'; 'Corvus: A Life with Birds')(Book review)
August 9, 2008... Crow Country by Mark Cocker Cape, 8.99 [pounds sterling], pp. 216, ISBN 9780224076012 [telephone] 7.19 [pounds sterling] (plus 2.45 [pounds sterling] p&p) 0870 429 6655 Corvus: A Life with Birds by Esther Woolfson Granta,...

Deceit and dilemma.(Our Story Begins)(Book review)
August 9, 2008... Our Story Begins by Tobias Wolff Bloomsbury, 18.99 [pounds sterling], pp. 379, ISBN 978 0 7475 9727 8 [telephone] 15.19 [pounds sterling] (plus 2.45 [pounds sterling] p&p) 0870 429 6655 This book contains ten new stories from...

Good length delivery.(24 for 3)(Book review)
August 9, 2008... 24 for 3 by Jennie Walker Bloomsbury, 9.99 [pounds sterling], pp. 144 ISBN 9780747597926 [telephone] 7.90 [pounds sterling] (plus 2.45 [pounds sterling] p&p) 0870 429 6655 This short novel was first published in a tiny edition at...

Letters from the front.
August 9, 2008... 1918: A Very British Victory by Peter Hart Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 20 [pounds sterling], pp. 552 ISBN 9780297864529 [telephone] 16 [pounds sterling] (plus 2.45 [pounds sterling] p&p) 0870 429 6655 A wide gap has opened up...

Recent crime novels.(Book review)
August 9, 2008... The Murder Farm (Quercus, 8.99 [pounds sterling]) is Andrea Schenkel's first novel and has been hugely successful in her native Germany and elsewhere. Based on a real case, it is set in the 1950s and deals with murder of a farmer, his wife,...

The desperate fate of Malcolm Lowry.(LIFE & LETTERS)(Column)
August 9, 2008... Late one night many years ago I was in a bar round the corner from the Roman offices of the newspaper La Stampa. After a few grappas I gave my friend Anthony something I had written that day. He read it without evident appreciation, and,...

Edinburgh's cultural jamboree: Lloyd Evans on the esotericism of the Festival and the ragamuffin risk-taking of the Fringe.(ARTS)
August 9, 2008... Here we go again. Like some vast, hairy, attention-seeking arachnid, the Edinburgh Festival has settled its gross and gorgeous shape in the shadow of Arthur's Seat. Ever since its inception in 1947 the Festival has grown steadily and spawned a...

Master of interior space.
August 9, 2008... Vilhelm Hammershoi: the Poetry of Silence Royal Academy, until 7 September Supported by OAK Foundation Denmark and Novo Nordisk 2008 Season supporters Sotheby's The poet Rilke cautioned that 'Hammershoi is not one of those...

Chinese wonders.(Swan Lake)(Dance review)
August 9, 2008... National Ballet of China: Swan Lake Royal Opera House My first article for The Spectator was a slightly long-winded analysis of the state of Swan Lake on the eve of the ballet's centenary. It followed a far more pedantic four-part...

Taking liberties.('Her Naked Skin', At Liberty')(Theater review)
August 9, 2008... Her Naked Skin Olivier Elaine Stritch At Liberty Shaw In 2004 Rebecca Lenkiewicz got the black spot from the Critics' Circle. Sorry, I mean she was voted 'most promising playwright'. Less a gong, more a millstone. Praising...

Monteverdi marathon.(Claudio Monteverdi's L'Incoronazione di Poppea)(Opera review)
August 9, 2008... L'Incoronazione di Poppea The Proms Glyndebourne's visits to the Proms are usually highly successful, which can seem odd considering that the home auditorium is so comparatively intimate, not to mention comfortable and...

Worshipping perfection.(Elegy)(Movie review)
August 9, 2008... Elegy 15, London and Key Cities Elegy is about an ageing professor (Ben Kingsley) and a beautiful young woman (Penelope Cruz), and it is based on the Philip Roth novel The Dying Animal, which, in turn, takes its title from Yeats's...