Spectator articles from December 2003

Spectator archives from December 2003

Portrait of the week.
December 6, 2003... The Democratic Unionist party became the biggest in Northern Ireland after elections for the Assembly there, which has been suspended for more than a year; 'A democrat will not sit down with armed gangsters and murderers to negotiate the future...

Equality is unfair.
December 6, 2003... On Monday the Employment Equality Regulations 2003 came into force, making it an offence, subject to an unlimited fine, for employers to discriminate against their staff on the basis of their religious belief or sexual orientation. On Tuesday...

Diary.
December 6, 2003... Addis Ababa The last time I was here was to cover the story of the mid-Eighties famine for the Mirror. The story was complicated by the fact that we had Robert 'Mercy Mission' Maxwell for company. I was summoned to the presence for a...

The Tories should support Tony Blair's magnificent defiance of his own party.(Politics)
December 6, 2003... The intelligent case for voting for Tony Blair in 1997 and 2001 was simple and very compelling. Only New Labour could bring about deep-seated reform of British public services. The argument went as follows: the Tories would never be trusted to...

The Spectator's note.
December 6, 2003... This week's Richard Desmond story concerns Des the Crusader for Ancient Freedoms. This great patron of letters is a man with whom liberty-loving Spectator readers and opponents of the nanny state everywhere can find common cause. He was once...

Health and safety spell danger: Rachel Royce says that the rules and regulations now governing police procedures are putting victims' lives at risk.(Cover Story)
December 6, 2003... Have you noticed that whenever there is an armed siege these days the police quickly seal off the area, surround the site with at least 20 marksmen, send for the trained negotiators and, um... wait until the victim is good and dead before they...

Figures of fun: the US army claimed to have killed 54 insurgents in a gun battle in Samarra this week, but, says Julian Manyon, it turns out that only eight died, and some of them were civilians.
December 6, 2003... Baghdad It is a sad fact that most people can see things only through the prism of their own television culture. Thus for the American soldiers of the 4th Infantry Division, Taskforce Iron Horse, the dusty towns and villages north of...

You have been warmed: Tom Fort goes to St James's, Piccadilly, and hears Michael Meacher and others warn that the end is nigh.
December 6, 2003... The handsome church of St James's in Piccadilly is a lively, friendly sort of place. There are frequent classical concerts inside, and most days a market outside. A green caravan turns up regularly to offer 'crisis listening', and once a month...

Ancient & modern.
December 6, 2003... It is routinely said to be better that 99 guilty men should escape the noose than one innocent be hanged. As the capital punishment debate starts again, an ancient might ask 'Better for whom?' Greeks and Romans held life more tightly than...

That labour humbug in full: socialist policies impoverish health and education--so Diane Abbott and her fellow socialists go private.
December 6, 2003... Hypocrisy has always been the handmaiden of socialism. Throughout modern history, left-wing ideologues have sought to avoid the consequences of the warped policies which they impose so enthusiastically on the public. When it comes to their own...

The blairs.
December 6, 2003... WOW! A 1! YOU'RE IN TIP-TOP SHAPE!

Meeting of the extremes: Dean Godson on the background to last week's elections in Northern Ireland.
December 6, 2003... That's another fine mess you've gotten me into,' quipped David Trimble with black humour as he bounded in to meet with Paul Murphy, the Northern Ireland Secretary, in the Lady Grey Room at Hillsborough Castle last Saturday. As well he might:...

Mind your language.
December 6, 2003... 'What? What! What?!' said my husband with a provoking profligacy of punctuation. 'What?' I said before I could stop myself. 'Buttonhole,' he said. 'You say here it's nothing to do with a hole. But it is. Look. I put my poppy in it.'...

The nice side of Saddam: the Iraqi tyrant's translator tells Philip Delves Broughton that his master--'a kind, patient man, ready to be contradicted'--was writing a novel on the eve of war.
December 6, 2003... Paris Less than a month before the invasion of Iraq, Saddam Hussein was focusing on his latest novel. Be Gone, Demons! told the story of Ibrahim and his three grandchildren, Ezekiel, Aissa and Youssef, who symbolised Moses, Jesus and...

Job of the week.
December 6, 2003... Senior Photocopying Assistant, Legal and Democratic Services Division Rhondda Cynon Taf County Borough Council Salary: 19,185 [pounds sterling]--20,469 [pounds sterling] Can you help us build on our impressive track record and meet the...

Globophobia: a weekly survey of world restrictions on freedom and free trade.(Brief Article)
December 6, 2003... The big story of the past 50 years has been the triumph of Western capitalism over Eastern communism--although sometimes you begin to wonder. After 50 years, China has thrown off the yoke of socialism and embraced capitalism--only to run...

Taking liberties: Michael Yardley describes his bitter experience of how the licensing people get their information about who owns a TV set.
December 6, 2003... In pre-Velvet-Revolution Czechoslovakia they used to license typewriters; in the UK we still license televisions. It raises money for an outrageously biased and smug state broadcaster. This whole system is hostile to liberty. It also has some...

Naked couples walking through cornfields--anything else is evil.(Media Studies)
December 6, 2003... As the days pass, more and more people are assuming that Hollinger International will be forced to sell the Daily Telegraph, the Sunday Telegraph and The Spectator. Of the homegrown suitors, the favourite remains the pornographer, Richard...

All for the best in the best of all possible worlds.(And Another Thing)
December 6, 2003... Pessimism is the 'ism' which has succeeded Marxism in occupying the vacant space in the minds of the slobbering classes. Nowhere has it established a more feverish grip than among journalists, especially in Britain, where there is a pervasive...

Now we know: discrimination against exhibitionists is politically incorrect.(Shared Opinion)
December 6, 2003... Writing from the Commons for the Daily Telegraph this week, though alluding to him, I went to tortuous lengths not to name the MP whom a Sunday newspaper had exposed as the subject of the latest 'gay sex scandal'. Why should I have mentioned...

Like-minded.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
December 6, 2003... From Andrew Jones Sir: Mark Strauss's analysis of the new anti-Semitism ('Who hates the Jews now?', 29 November) is a chilling reminder that the far Right and the anti-globalisation movement have much in common in their detestation of...

Proud to be lazy.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
December 6, 2003... From Barbara Field Sir: Rod Liddle's assertion ('Women who won't', 29 November) that women who choose to stay at home are merely lazy and idle is... spot on in my case. I stopped working two weeks before my first child was born. He is...

Skimming through.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
December 6, 2003... From Christopher Booker Sir: The 30 sentences of John Laughland's 'review' of our book The Great Deception: The Secret History of the European Union (Books, 29 November) contain no fewer than 22 serious factual errors or...

Cheap jabs for the grunts.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
December 6, 2003... From Fiammetta Rocco Sir: While researching 7he Miraculous Fever Tree, my recent book about malaria and the discovery of quinine, I learnt that one of the main reasons France flailed in its attempt to build a canal across the isthmus of...

What's stopping the US?(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
December 6, 2003... From Professor Sir Michael Howard Sir: I read with interest Mark Steyn's proposal that the United States should now liberate five more countries ('These five regimes must go', 29 November). An excellent idea, provided that she has...

Victimhood's chronicler.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
December 6, 2003... From Sir Peregrine Worsthome Sir: In rebuttal of my complaint that Martha Gellhorn was unsympathetic to the victims of Soviet tyranny, John Hatt (Letters, 29 November) cites her writing an article critical of Soviet tyranny 'as early [my...

Nearly 'Gone Away' for good.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
December 6, 2003... From Frances Marshall Sir: On reading Mary's advice (Your problems solved, 21 November), I took immediate action. I used Mary's information to acquire the 'Gone Away' hunting call as the ringtone for my mobile phone. I thought it would...

Bird-brained.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
December 6, 2003... From Peter Burden Sir: The Vole leaves us suspended (29 November) in his failure to reveal if any of Richard Desmond's minions had the presence of mind to utter the obvious response to the distinguished publisher's enquiry, 'I wonder what...

Points under discussion.(Eats, Shoots And Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach To Punctuation)(Book Review)
December 6, 2003... EATS, SHOOTS AND LEAVES: THE ZERO TOLERANCE APPROACH TO PUNCTUATION by Lynne Truss Profile, 9.99 [pounds sterling], pp. 228, ISBN 1861976127 Some great writers lust can't punctuate at all, but not that many. Anyone who reads through the...

The mysterious mists of Hoban-land.(Her Name Was Lola)(Book Review)
December 6, 2003... HER NAME WAS LOLA by Russell Hobart Bloomsbury, 15.99 [pounds sterling], pp. 207, ISBN 0747570248 As Max comes out of Russell Square tube station on the way meet Seamus for lunch, he encounters what turns out to be a demon, set on him by...

A selection or recent paperbacks.
December 6, 2003... Non-fiction: Iris Origo by Caroline Moorehead, John Murray, 8.99 [pounds sterling] Maquis by George Millar, Cassell, 6.99 [pounds sterling] Lives of the Mind by Roger Kimball, Ivan R. Dee, $16.95 Nobody's Perfect by Anthony...

The wonderful world of Wales.(The Bank Manager And The Holy Grail)(Book Review)
December 6, 2003... THE BANK MANAGER AND THE HOLY GRAIL by Byron Rogers Aurora, 12.99 [pounds sterling], pp. 271, ISBN 1854109499 The only journalist I ever knew who rote pieces remotely like the ones in this book was John Gale of the Observer (he killed...

The emperor who made his horse consul.(Caligula)(Book Review)
December 6, 2003... CALIGULA by Allan Massie Sceptre, 17.99 [pounds sterling], pp. 279, ISBN 0340823135 The field is crowded, but among cruel and wicked dynasties the Julio-Claudians must take pride of place, outperforming rivals like the Borgias or the...

Laughter laced with pain.(The Best Loved Poems Of John Betjeman)(Book Review)
December 6, 2003... THE BEST LOVED POEMS OF JOHN BETJEMAN John Murray, 8.99 [pounds sterling], pp. 112, ISBN 0719565456 In Against Oblivion: Lives of the Twentieth-Century Poets, Ion Hamilton pretended to a community of opinion regarding John Betjeman, when...

Being prodigal with the truth.(Living To Tell The Tale)(Book Review)
December 6, 2003... LIVING TO TELL THE TALE by Gabriel Garcia Marquez Cape, 18.99 [pounds sterling], pp. 483, ISBN 0224072781 Gabriel Garcia Marquez, according to a recent poll of prominent literati, is the most admired author in the world. His One Hundred...

Reading the hand of the Master.(The Cambridge Companion To Giotto)(Book Review)
December 6, 2003... THE CAMBRIDGE COMPANION TO GIOTTO edited by Anne Derbes and Mark Sandona CUP, 70 [pounds sterling], pp. 313, ISBN 0521770076 Giotto is very widely regarded as the founder of naturalism in "Western art, a position he has held since Vasari...

The true shiver of unease.(Undesirable Guests And Other Stories)(Book Review)
December 6, 2003... UNDESIRABLE GUESTS AND OTHER STORIES by William Charlton Tartarus Press, Coverley House, Carlton-in-Coverdale, Leyburn, N. Yorks DL 8 4 AY, Email: tartarus@pavilion.co.uk, 27.50 [pounds sterling], pp. 239, ISBN 1872621694 Undesirable...

The trail of the comeback kid.(Puttin' On The Style: The Lonnie Donegan Story)(Book Review)
December 6, 2003... PUTTIN' ON THE STYLE: THE LONNIE DONEGAN STORY by Spencer Leigh Finbarr International, Folkestone, Kent CT20 2QQ, Tel." 01303259316, 6.99 [pounds sterling], pp. 160, ISBN 0952950022 As a 1950s schoolboy I had two main heroes: the writer...

Children's books for Christmas.
December 6, 2003... Last year, while wrestling to wrap a particularly difficult large model helicopter, whose rotor blades kept bursting out through the paper, I made a mental resolution that in future I would give as many people as possible books for Christmas....

Unexpected Passenger.(Brief Article)(Poem)
December 6, 2003... Unexpected Passenger Classic FM spills memories in my ear as I drive northward on the motorway; landmarks fly past with disconcerting speed --but I travel backwards: hear again the muffled boom of bells beneath the...

Just wild about birds.(Audubon's Elephant)(Book Review)
December 6, 2003... AUDUBON'S ELEPHANT by Duff Hart-Davis Weidenfeld, 18.99 [pounds sterling], pp. 192, ISBN 029782967X There cannot be many for whom the name Audubon means nothing, nor many who know more of him than that he was the author of The Birds of...

Green thoughts in a green shade.(The Garden Of Cosmic Speculation)(Book Review)
December 6, 2003... THE GARDEN OF COSMIC SPECULATION by Charles Jencks Frances Lincoln, 35 [pounds sterling], pp. 250, ISBN 0711222169 At Portrack Maggie Keswick and Charles Jencks have designed one of the most intriguing gardens of the 20th century, with...

The battle between heart and politics.(For Your Freedom And Ours: The Kosciusko Squadron: Forgotten Heroes Of World War Two)(Book Review)
December 6, 2003... FOR YOUR FREEDOM AND OURS: THE KOSCIUSKO SQUADRON: FORGOTTEN HEROES OF WORLD WAR TWO by Lynne Olson and Stanley Cloud William Heinemann, 20 [pounds sterling], pp. 428, ISBN 0434008680 Poland is again a major ally of the West, member of...

Tarnished heroes, but still heroic.(Rivers Of Gold: The Rise Of The Spanish Empire)(Book Review)
December 6, 2003... RIVERS OF GOLD: THE RISE OF THE SPANISH EMPIRE by Hugh Thomas Weidenfeld, 25 [pounds sterling], pp. 604, ISBN 0297645633 When John Donne apostrophised his mistress with the words 'Oh my America! My new-found land', the analogy was not quite...

Short-changed by today's artists? Harry Eyres wonders if our sense of awe at nature in sublime mode has gone for ever.(Arts)
December 6, 2003... Can you make art about nature any more? About nature. I mean, not 'nature'. For the curators of this year's Turner Prize show (now at Tare Britain) and the orthodoxy at Tare Modern, it would be a sign of hopeless naivety and old-fashionedness...

Revelations in miniature.
December 6, 2003... Illuminating the Renaissance: The Triumph of Flemish Manuscript Painting in Europe Sackler Wing, Royal Academy, until 22 February 2004 Manuscript illumination has been called 'the quintessential mediaeval art form'--and indeed the idea of a...

Wicked little rebel.
December 6, 2003... Jean-Jacques Lebel: Works from 1960 to 1965 Mayor Gallery 22a Cork Street, London WI, until 19 December It would seem that the 1960s, like the poor, are always with us. London currently offers two slices of cultural history from that...

No worries, mate.(Gardens)
December 6, 2003... A week ago last Saturday, at 10 o'clock in the morning, I stood in a wood in Northamptonshire, prey to a succession of dreadful anxieties. I was picking up on a shoot and waiting, with an excited yellow Labrador, for a drive to begin. But my...

The need to know.(Music)
December 6, 2003... One of the pleasures of going to art galleries is to look at the people looking at the paintings. I rather sympathise with those who clearly know nothing about the received hierarchy of greatness in painters and who have made something of a...

Struck by Electra.(Mourninq Becomes Electra at the Lyttelton)(The Secret Rapture at the Lyric)(The God Botherers at the Bush)(Theater Review)
December 6, 2003... Mourninq Becomes Electra Lyttelton The Secret Rapture Lyric The God Botherers Bush I was dreading Mourning Becomes Electra. A four-and-a-half-hour epic set in New England with two intervals! It promised to be a gruelling...

One of the surprises of the RA's current show of illuminated manuscripts is a little sheet of 14 portrait.(Brief Article)
December 6, 2003... One of the surprises of the RA's current show of illuminated manuscripts (reviewed on page 60) is a little sheet of 14 portrait heads vividly drawn in ink and white chalk by the 15th-century Master of the Houghton Miniatures. To look at them,...

Dark intentions.(The Turn of the Screw at the Royal College of Music)(Twiliqht of the Gods at the Barbican)(Opera Review)
December 6, 2003... The Turn of the Screw Royal College of Music Twiliqht of the Gods Barbican The Turn of the Screw is this autumn's Benjamin Britten Opera School's presentation at the Royal College of Music, with as usual two alternating casts of young...

Best of 2003.(Pop music)(Sound Recording Review)
December 6, 2003... Has 2003 been a good year for pop music? Ask me in a few years, and even then I probably won't know. It has only recently dawned on me what a great year 2000 was, what with the O Brother, Where Art Thou? soundtrack, Grandaddy's The Sophtware...

Period charm.(Television)(Foyle's War)(Television Program Review)
December 6, 2003... Sometimes I feel ever so slightly guilty about the huge areas of TV that I never bother to review: police procedurals such as Frost, Taggart and Prime Suspect, for example; or cosy Sunday-night dramas like Ballykissangel, Heartbeat or Monarch...

The pain game.
December 6, 2003... The lunacy of excessive litigation in certain American states was explored in a rather disturbing Crossing Continents on Radio Four last week (Thursday). In Illinois, for example, physicians are leaving because the cost of medical liability...

Are you beaglewise?
December 6, 2003... I have never much liked the idea of hunting a hare. This is an aesthetic point, not a moral one, for the means of death is not cruel. The fox appears always in one's mind as cunning, an adversary against whom one must pit one's wits. He is also...

Trumped by the Donald.(High life)
December 6, 2003... Palm Beach When William Paley died aged 90, 14 years ago, he was referred to as being middle-aged in the Palm Beach press. Paley would have liked that. He had panache and lots of drive, and he loved women. Going into his tenth decade could...

The laughter of sinners.(Low life)
December 6, 2003... In a fit of madness the other day I bought a book of selected passages from John Donne's sermons. The thunderous sermons, with titles such as 'Terrible Things', 'The World Drowned in Sin', 'The Gate of Death' and 'All Must Die', make...

Thanksgiving dilemma.(Singular life)
December 6, 2003... Virginia The waitress, attired in a frilly cap and a tight bodice, slapped a platter of food down on the trestle table, which was gleaming like a nut in the rheumy afternoon sun. 'Have some more colonial chicken,' she said, indicating the...

Wait and see.(Bridge)
December 6, 2003... IT'S easy to be too hasty in judging partner's choice of lead when defending a contract. We've all tut-tutted under our breath, for instance, when partner leads a suit into declarer's teuace. But you really can't judge these things until you...

Restaurants.(Villandry, 170 Great Portland Street, London)(Restaurant Review)
December 6, 2003... My partner's brother and his wife had a baby last week at the Portland Hospital on Great Portland Street. Absolutely adorable. The hospital, that is. Sum, the baby is delicious--those little toes, with perfect nails as tiny and pearly as...

A morass of muck--and money down the drain.(Property)
December 6, 2003... The Book of Genesis tells us nothing of the sanitary arrangements provided in the Garden of Eden, but in that perfect, prelapsarian Paradise Adam and Eve could have got by quite comfortably with a septic tank. In a fallen world, though, things...

The built-in rip-off.(Right to buy)
December 6, 2003... One policy above all is credited with winning the 1979 general election for the Conservatives: the right to buy. Britain in the 1970s was a country where the majority still lived in council housing and few aspired to leave the estates on which...

Greatness departs.(Spectator Sport)
December 6, 2003... Even the best performers have difficulty in knowing when to go. Particularly the best, one might say, because, having scaled the heights, they imagine they have enough puff in them for one last climb. But it was a realistic Steve Waugh who...

Dear Mary.(Your Problems Solved)
December 6, 2003... Q. I have always deplored the practice of having to shake hands with strangers. After a burly oaf at a smart luncheon party shook my hand with unseemly force, I was barely able to hold my knife. The pain and fear that he had crashed the bones...

One world.
December 13, 2003... It is traditional at this time of year to feel a kind of self-disgust. After the wrapping-paper bas been burned in the tire, and the last mince pie has been forced down the gullet, you sit back, crapulous and afraid, and try to find some...

Apology.(Correction Notice)
December 13, 2003... The price of The Spectator was incorrectly printed on the cover of last week's issue dated 6 December 2003. We apologise for this error and assure you that the price remains at 2.50 [pounds sterling] every week apart from the Christmas double...

Portrait of the week.
December 13, 2003... Mr Gordon Brown, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, found new ways of increasing taxes to cover government deficits in his pre-Budget report; but he declared that he wanted to help small enterprises. British Gas is to raise prices for its gas and...

Diary.
December 13, 2003... I'm not sure about this old ship business,' said Marina. 'Where's the love-interest? Why can't we go and see the Hugh Grant thing?' 'No no,' I said, 'I know it's all about ships, but it's gonna be great. Trust me.' And I was right. They must...

What Tony Blair really needs is a stiff drink.(Politics)
December 13, 2003... By the time Parliament rises for the Christmas recess, the Prime Minister will have endured 18 consecutive days without a day off. This stretch embraces two uncomfortable working weekends, the first of them to the fly-blown Nigerian capital of...

Is BBC 2 becoming so chippy that it will lose the plot--and therefore its point?(Media Studies)
December 13, 2003... Jane Root, the controller of BBC 2, has decided to axe the award-winning current affairs programme Correspondent. Thirty years ago there were a number of such programmes on the BBC, and the disappearance of one of them would scarcely have been...

Saddam's Christmas.
December 13, 2003... CHRISTMAS EVE HEY, I LOVE CHRISTMAS, ME! THE TREE, THE TURKEY, THE DECORATIONS... AND THE PRESENTS, DEAR PRESENTS? I THOUGHT WE AGREED NOT TO BUY ANY THIS YEAR, WHAT WITH ME BEING OUT OF WORK NO WE DIDN'T RIGHT DEAR....

Africa isn't dying of Aids: the headline figures are horrible: almost 30 million Africans have HIV/Aids. But, says Rian Malan, the figures are computer-generated estimates and they appear grotesquely exaggerated when set against population statistics.
December 13, 2003... Cape Town It was the eve of Aids Day here. Rock stars like Bono and Bob Geld of were jetting in lot a fundraising concert with Nelson Mandela, and the airwaves were full of dark talk about megadeath and the armies of feral orphans who...

The Blairs.
December 13, 2003... I'M SORRY I ASKED! NO TOP UP FEES! NO MORE TAXES! SHUT UP! NO MORE WASTE! NO! NO! NO! SHUT UP!

Mind your language.
December 13, 2003... This year we have seen a word born like one of those volcanoes off the coast of Iceland. The word is issue, in a new and puzzling meaning. It had been looming through the seawater for many months before, but now it has come hissing and steaming...

We need to be saved: hell exists, says Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor, but so does hope. Choices have consequences, and by making the right choices we move towards God.
December 13, 2003... Before very long, I would imagine, together with my fellow-Cardinals, I will be going to the Vatican for the election of the successor to Pope John Paul II. The election takes place in the most precious jewel of the Vatican Museum, the...

Reasons to be cheerful: Theodore Dalrymple on the joy of seeing the extraordinary in the ordinary--in gooseberries, for example, even in human beings.
December 13, 2003... In my line of work, it is rather hard to think of reasons to be cheerful. On the contrary, it requires quite a lot of concentrated intellectual effort: one has the sensation of scraping the bottom of one's skull for thoughts that just aren't...

Job of the week.
December 13, 2003... Cross Cutting Theme Advisors (two posts) North West Regional Assembly Salary: 28,320 [pounds sterling] to 30,594 [pounds sterling] The Assembly is taking a leading role on mainstreaming cross cutting themes across the North West. These...

The temple of whom (singularly possessive)? Craig Brown has to mind his Ps and Qs when he goes carol-singing with The Pedants' Association.
December 13, 2003... It's always pleasant to go carol-singing, or carols-singing, with The Pedants' Association, formerly The Pedants Association, originally The Pedant's Association. I first joined ten years ago with the long-term aim of attracting the requisite...

Window of opportunity: Tom Stacey on how, as an act of penance, his great-great-uncle donated the great west window to King's College Chapel.
December 13, 2003... As the choristers of King's College Chapel, Cambridge, fill our ears on radio and our eyes on television with their double Christmas bill of carols for the birth of Jesus, the light that plays upon the Chapel's sublime fan vaulting is, as ever,...

Why al-Qa'eda is winning: Correlli Barnett says that the occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq serve as object lessons in how not to conduct an anti-terrorist campaign.
December 13, 2003... Last month, the sixth since President Bush proclaimed 'Mission Accomplished' in Iraq, proved the worst so far in terms of American and 'coalition' body bags: 81 in all. November was also marked by the bombing of a residential quarter in Riyadh,...

Stop flattering Putin: Rachel Polonsky says there is no reason why the West should indulge a brutal and repressive regime.
December 13, 2003... Moscow Russia's Duma election was net an irrelevant farce. It marked an important stage in the continuing struggle between President Putin and the enlightened few who are striving, with talent, energy and courage, to create democracy and a...

Go to work on Christmas Day ... you can avoid barbarity and blasphemy, says Digby Anderson, by making the Epiphany your big feast.
December 13, 2003... Good generals know when it is time to give up an impossible defence and seek a more secure position to hold. It is time to give up Christmas. It is new utterly overrun by the combined forces of sentimentality, irreligion, bad manners and worse...

Recipe for success: Mary Wakefield meets Nigella Lawson and finds that she is friendly, confident, beautiful--but nervous with it.(Interview)
December 13, 2003... In a window-seat at the far end of the bar in the Rib Room of the Carlton Tower Hotel, Nigella Lawson, dressed in black, sits waiting for me. The lighting is mellow, the seats leather and her eyes modestly downcast. If she were auditioning for...