Spectator articles from December 2004

Spectator archives from December 2004

Portrait of the week.
December 4, 2004... Mr Gordon Brown, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, juggled his black hole and his Golden Rule in a pre-Budget statement. Mr Oliver Letwin, the shadow Chancellor, said he would 'expect' the Tories to make at least 'one specific tax pledge that we...

Blunkett's kiss and tell.
December 4, 2004... There is no prize for predicting the two least exciting political events of 2005: the publication of Sir Alan Budd's inquiry into David Blunkett's alleged 'fast-tracking' of a visa application for his former lover's nanny, and the conclusion of...

Diary.
December 4, 2004... A charming retired lady doctor of my acquaintance buttonholes me whenever I run into her in London. She knows I write for The Spectator and she is convinced that this Diary page is an irritating spoof. 'It's just not possible that those people,...

Politicians and journalists are in a conspiracy against the public.(Politics)
December 4, 2004... The universal predicament which confronts the western world at the start of the 21st century concerns the breakdown of boundaries. Philosophers blur the distinction between good and evil; society no longer protects family life; sociologists...

The Spectator's notes.
December 4, 2004... On the whole, one sympathises with those sections of the media that do not rush to reveal the sex lives of public figures, rather than the tabloids which bellow about the public's 'right to know'. But there does come a point when those of us...

Mandy: wanted for questioning: Rod Liddle reveals that the South African police want to talk to Peter Mandelson about the attempted coup in Equatorial Guinea.(Cover Story)
December 4, 2004... As political scandals go, it may be less immediately compelling than all this business about the Home Secretary's love life. But in terms of import and, I suspect, shelf life, the extent of British involvement in the attempted coup against the...

Gordon's Swedish model: Nick Herbert says the real reason to be frightened of Labour is that it is the party of big, expensive and intrusive government.
December 4, 2004... After watching the Queen's Speech last week, I found it hard to agree with the commentators who were insisting that the government's intention was to scare us out of our wits. We have indeed been given reason to run screaming into our homes,...

Globophobia: a weekly survey of world restrictions on freedom and free trade.
December 4, 2004... A loftily named environmental pressure group called the Food Commission has been upset by the sale of bottled water from Fiji in Waitrose supermarkets. The water, it complains, has clocked up 10,000 'food miles' before it reaches Western...

Backing the bad guy: Neil Barnett on the mood of angry defiance in Ukraine's Yanukovich-supporting east.
December 4, 2004... Donetsk The sleeper train from Kiev to Donetsk in eastern Ukraine offers more than mere physical transport--it is a time machine. For 20 [pounds sterling], a cabin decorated like a little rolling dacha will take you from the relatively...

Ulster is all right: Leo McKinstry says that a deal between Ian Paisley and Gerry Adams should be welcomed.
December 4, 2004... Sitting in a south Belfast restaurant on a crisp autumn afternoon a couple of weeks ago, I said to my wife, 'You know, I don't think I have tasted such a good risotto since we ate in that little cafe in Paris, just off the Champs-Elysees.' My...

The hounds of heaven: Martin Vander Weyer joins the Ampleforth Beagles for a blameless day of good company and brisk exercise.
December 4, 2004... I took up beagling not as a political gesture but because my dog died. Having walked with him for 12 years, I found walking without him too sad, so I more or less stopped. Then I met a friend at a party--a state-school teacher who had once been...

Second opinion.
December 4, 2004... Occasionally I walk home from the prison. Usually I take a taxi. Very rarely indeed do I drive; I don't much care for parking within a mile radius of an establishment from which car thieves are released daily. I turned on the wireless and...

My First Krug.
December 4, 2004... My wife Imogen gave birth to our first child in 1991. Ellie arrived over many hours during the night of 6th April 1991. I telephoned as many family and friends as I could, but a celebration was something that had to be postponed. I had a...

What a shower! Rachel Johnson on how the nation can be spared more Diana Memorial Fountain misery.
December 4, 2004... It was a perfect London autumn day. In Hyde Park the leaves were turning fiery gold, the tang of bonfire sharpened the air, and divorced fathers mooched along, occasionally pausing to pick up their bawling offspring when they crashed off their...

Ancient & modern.
December 4, 2004... It has been reported that a cancer patient has had an ovary transplanted into her left arm, and that despite its unusual location it is said to be functioning normally. It is good to see today's doctors gradually catching up with the ancient...

Why the nuns sacked me: the Tories propose 'turnaround' schools for unruly youngsters. Mary Kenny recalls what it is like to be an unruly youngster--and to be expelled.
December 4, 2004... Forty years on, I still can't decide whether Reverend Mother was right to expel me from my convent school at the age of 16. The shame, the mortification and the blazing sense of failure (and defiance) are still with me. I could argue--any...

Mind your language.
December 4, 2004... A reader tells me that he had always thought 'one-horse town' must have derived from a 1940s film script in which John Wayne pushes open the swing doors of a saloon, gets his whisky, then inquires, 'Whadda they call this one-horse town?' But my...

Verbal music in London's most magical drawing-room.(And Another Thing)
December 4, 2004... An experience I would on no account have missed took place the other evening in Albemarle Street, the London home for over two centuries of the great publishing house of John Murray. The setting was the splendid 18th-century drawing-room, full...

There's no smoking gun in this case. It's just one damn thing after another.(Another Voice)
December 4, 2004... In scene 9 of William Congreve's The Way of the World, amid a fiendish tangle of desire, deception and general waywardness (Sir Wilfull Witwoud: 'Ahey! Wenches? Where are the wenches?'), Lady Wishfort speaks for many of us as she cuts the...

The who, what, where when of the Blunkett-Quinn business.(Media Studies)
December 4, 2004... Who is more in the wrong, David Blunkett or Kimberly Quinn? Everyone has a view. Let me tell the story. I have deliberately chosen not to talk to Kimberly Quinn, who is publisher of The Spectator. Nor have I spoken to David Blunkett, or anyone...

Reading the runes on the rouble's rim--they say 'In Gold We Trust'.(City And Suburban)
December 4, 2004... For my birthday, I have been given a gold rouble. It's the thought that matters, of course--but which would you say was worth more: the rouble, or the gold? The promise to pay, or the precious metal? In the rouble's homeland this question has...

A policeman's lot.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
December 4, 2004... From Gareth Lawrence Sir: As a police constable with 15 years of service I laughed aloud at Nicky Samengo-Turner's account of his ordeal at the hands of the Metropolitan Police ('New Labour's police state', 27 November). His reaction to...

Respect.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
December 4, 2004... From Prue Leith Sir: As one in the thick of education and training I'd agree with a lot of what Roger Scruton says ('Know your place', 27 November), and only add that most teachers, and indeed pupils, would too. Unstinting praise when not...

Knowledge moves on.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
December 4, 2004... From Jonathan Osborne Sir: As amusing as your article 'Dumbing down: the proof (27 November) may be, it panders to prejudice and undermines its own argument. All this 1898 test really proves is that society has moved on, something which...

The quality of mercy.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
December 4, 2004... From Malcolm Knott Sir: Why does Trevor Grove JP (Diary, 27 November) feel obliged to impose a sentence which 'sticks in the throat a bit'? If he takes the view that prosecuting a first offender for a trivial, unimportant offence serves no...

No expert on South Africa.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
December 4, 2004... From R.W. Johnson Sir: Reading Ronald Segal's review of my South Africa: the First Man, the Last Nation (Books, 13 November) caused me to think back to 1993-94, when I was involved in a large-scale programme of survey research in the...

How fish feel.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
December 4, 2004... From Stephen Grieve Sir: I suspect that Geoffrey Wheatcroft is unscientific in saying that only an ethical imbecile could 'pretend' that there is no moral difference between fox-hunting and fishing ('Death to Iraqis, but not to foxes', 20...

Rogue mail.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
December 4, 2004... From John C. Gardner Sir: I can add my little bit of misery to the article by Edward Chancellor ('Hate mail', 27 November). My wife and I moved from St Andrews to Oxfordshire in August last year. We contracted for six months' redirection...

Mock me at your peril.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
December 4, 2004... From Grey Gowrie Sir: The otherwise admirable Roger Lewis (Christmas Books, 27 November) should take care, as I write this from a house re-roofed, insulated and improved by the proceeds of actions for libel, slander and general nuisance....

An ousted PM.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
December 4, 2004... From Ian Cochrane Sir: Danny Kruger (Diary, 20 November) states that as far as he knows 'no prime minister has ever lost his seat while in office'. Prime Minister J.C. Smuts lost the Standerton constituency in the 1948 general elections...

A man of many dressing-gowns.(Book Review)
December 4, 2004... THE NEW ANNOTATED SHERLOCK HOLMES edited by Leslie S, Klinger Norton, 2 volumes, 35 [pounds sterling], pp. 1,280, ISBN 0393059162 If you find yourself lingering on the pavement outside Baker Street tube station on an average morning, you...

Changing history with a tenpenny knife.(Book Review)
December 4, 2004... THE ASSASSIN by Ronald Blythe Black Dog Books, Tel: 01603 623 771, 16.95 [pounds sterling], pp. 276, ISBN 0952883996 This is a strange and wonderful novel that deserves the most serious attention. Whenever Ronald Blythe's name comes up in...

Renaissance man in all his richness.(Book Review)
December 4, 2004... LEONARDO DA VINCI: THE FLIGHTS OF THE MIND by Charles Nicholl Allen Lane, 25 [pounds sterling], pp. 502, ISBN 0713994932 * 23 [pounds sterling] (plus 2.25 [pounds sterling] p&p) 0870 800 4848 LEONARDO by Martin Kemp OUP, 14.99 [pounds...

Bamboozling the opposition.(Book Review)
December 4, 2004... THE DECEIVERS by Thaddeus Holt Weidenfeld, 30 [pounds sterling], pp. 1,148, ISBN 0297848046 * 26 [pounds sterling] (plus 2.25 [pounds sterling] p&p) 0870 800 4848 This book, like so much of the modern western population, is obese. It...

Disguise that hides a hard punch.(Book Review)
December 4, 2004... AFTERBURNER by Peter Porter Picador, 8.99 [pounds sterling], pp. 77, ISBN 0330434385 It is 50 years since Peter Porter arrived in 'rain-veiled Tilbury' from his native Australia. 'I came, I saw, I conjured,' is how he summarises his...

Cleansing the stables of language.(Book Review)
December 4, 2004... LOST FOR WORDS by John Humphrys Hoddel; 14.99 [pounds sterling], pp. 334, ISBN 034083658X 12.99 [pounds sterling] (plus 2.25 [pounds sterling] p&p) 0870 800 4848 During the mid-17th century the idea gained ground in various parts of Europe...

Shot from an idealist's angle.(Book Review)
December 4, 2004... THE STORY OF FILM by Mark Cousins Pavilion, 25 [pounds sterling], pp. 512, ISBN 1862055742 23 [pounds sterling] (plus 2.25 [pounds sterling] p&p) 0870 800 4848 A question posed early on in Mark Cousins's book is bound to spur a reviewer's...

How and why did he do it?(Book Review)
December 4, 2004... ABRAMOVICH by Dominic Midgley and Chris Hutchins HarperCollins, 18.99 [pounds sterling], pp. 337, ISBN 0007189834 16.99 [pound sterling] (plus 2.25 [pounds sterling] p&p) 0870 800 4848 The true genius of the Russian businessman Roman...

The very model of a modern duke.(Book Review)
December 4, 2004... MILES by Gerard Noel Michael Russell, 15.95 [pounds sterling], pp. 176, ISBN 0859552896 Miles Fitzalan-Howard was one of eight children of a fairly distant cousin of the previous two Dukes of Norfolk, and so grew up in the give and take of...

Belonging and not belonging.(Book Review)
December 4, 2004... THE NIGHTMARE AND THE NOBLE DREAM: A LIFE OF H. L. A. HART by Nicola Lacey OUP, 25 [pounds sterling], pp. 422, ISBN 0199274975 23 [pounds sterling] (plus 2.25 [pounds sterling] p&p) 0870 800 4848 Nicola Lacey wanted to write an...

Correction.(Correction Notice)
December 4, 2004... The author of Nixon at the Movies, reviewed by David Caute last week, is Mark Feency, not Mark Feeley as printed. We apologise for this error.

Recent gardening books.
December 4, 2004... The late Paul Getty has left gardeners a surprising legacy. Gardens of the Roman World by Patrick Bowe was published in America last year by Getty publications and the copyright belongs to the J. Paul Getty Trust. Did our run-of-the-mill...

Fighting the 'good' fight.(Book Review)
December 4, 2004... AL-QAIDA'S JIHAD IN EUROPE: THE AFGHAN-BOSNIAN NETWORK by Evan F. Kohlmann Berg, 15 [pounds sterling], pp. 239, ISBN 1859738079 * 12.99 [pounds sterling] (plus 2.25 [pounds sterling] p&p) 0870 800 4848 Millions, perhaps even billions of...

A puzzle without a solution.(Book Review)
December 4, 2004... OPPENHEIMER: PORTRAIT OF AN ENIGMA by Jeremy Bernstein Duckworth, 16.99 [pounds sterling], pp. 223, ISBN 0715633309 * 14.99 [pounds sterling] (plus 2.25 [pounds sterling] p&p) 0870 800 4848 Jeremy Bernstein is extraordinarily, perhaps...

Seeing off six monarchs.(Book Review)
December 4, 2004... TIMOTHY THE TORTOISE: THE REMARKABLE STORY OF THE NATION'S OLDEST PET by Rory Knight Bruce Orion, 9.99 [pounds sterling], pp. 162, ISBN 0752868721 This beguiling little book, nostalgically illustrated with faded family snapshots, describes...

Loser takes most.(Book Review)
December 4, 2004... THE SHY PORNOGRAPHER by Peter Kinsley Amherst, 16.99 [pounds sterling], pp. 192, ISBN 1903637236 Ofrabjous day! Here is a comic novel that is really funny, with funny jokes about a funny hero. At the same time, Peter Kinsley wreaks a...

Goui and phooey.(Book Review)
December 4, 2004... THE REMARKABLE BAOBAB by Thomas Pakenham Weidenfeld, 12.99 [pounds sterling], pp. 144, ISBN 0297843737 * 11.99 [pounds sterling] (plus 2.25 [pounds sterling] p&p) 0870 800 4848 THE HERITAGE TREES OF BRITAIN AND NORTHERN IRELAND by Ben...

The nature of the beast.(Book Review)
December 4, 2004... STALIN by Robert Service Macmillan, 25 [pounds sterling], pp. 714, ISBN 0333726278 * 23 [pounds sterling] (plus 2.25 [pounds sterling] p&p) 0870 800 4848 Robert Service has set himself a formidable task. He has to explain how the son of a...

Sound effects: Henrietta Bredin on how music can add another dimension to drama.(Arts)
December 4, 2004... There is a long tradition of music to accompany drama. Shakespeare's plays, for example, would not only have been accompanied by, and embroidered and studded with, different sorts of music, but almost all contain at least one song, and it is a...

Master of invention.(Exhibitions 1)
December 4, 2004... William Nicholson (1872-1949): British Painter and Printmaker Royal Academy, until 23 January 2005 The very fact that this exhibition's subtitle has to explain who Nicholson is stands as a blatant admission of his supposed obscurity. The...

Last pearl.(Exhibitions 2)
December 4, 2004... James Fitton RA: A Very English Painter Crane Kalman Gallery, until 15 January In the official account of British 20th-century art, the big names belong to the international players whose universal vision won them a place in the annals of...

Virtuous living.(Exhibitions 3)
December 4, 2004... A German Dream: Masterpieces of Romanticism from the Nationalgalerie Berlin National Gallery of ireland, Dublin, until 30 January 2005 Penguin Classics uses details from the landscapes of Caspar David Friedrich to illustrate the covers of...

Moor pride.(Restoration)
December 4, 2004... The province of Extremadura is as different from the brochure-bright picture of tourist Spain as it is possible to be. Stretched along the Portuguese frontier, it has a sombre, restrained dignity, with mile upon mile of grassland like vast...

Irish tale.(Theatre 1)(Theater Review)
December 4, 2004... It must have been some time in 1967: I was fresh (well, freshish) out of Oxford and had, rather to my amazement, been invited by Sir Noel Coward to write his authorised biography. Early in my research, I had discovered that during the first...

An exhibition of work by Oscar Rabine, including 'Tableau a deux etages', 2003 above, can be seen at the Leicester Galleries, 5 Ryder Street, London SW1 until 11 December.(Brief Article)
December 4, 2004... An exhibition of work by Oscar Rabine, including 'Tableau a deux etages', 2003 above, can be seen at the Leicester Galleries, 5 Ryder Street, London SW1 until 11 December. In an introduction to the catalogue, John Spurling explains how the...

Raising the spirits.(Theatre 2)(Theater Review)
December 4, 2004... Blithe Spirit Savoy The Earthly Paradise Almeida Thumping great crowds at the Savoy. The Peter Hall Company's production of Blithe Spirit is exactly what Noel Coward deserves, a reverent, effective, and somehow cheerless show. Penelope...

Horses for courses.(Music)
December 4, 2004... I wonder how many people are in my position, wanting the BBC to be seen to represent their own special interest, quick to belabour the authorities with their righteous indignation when they feel left out. It is too easy to expect a service...

An exhibition entitled Circling the Square: Avant-garde Porcelain from Revolutionary Russia can be seen in the Hermitage Rooms at Somerset House.(Brief Article)
December 4, 2004... An exhibition entitled Circling the Square: Avant-garde Porcelain from Revolutionary Russia can be seen in the Hermitage Rooms at Somerset House. Russia's first porcelain factory was founded in 1744 on the Riva Neva, some six miles from St...

Raw passion.(Olden but golden)
December 4, 2004... One of the more infallible ways of annoying Mrs Spencer is to conduct a conversation about the pleasures of pop music in her presence. She refuses to see merit in any of it, and my custom, in my drinking days, of playing the Grateful Dead or...

Problem piece.(Opera)(Opera Review)
December 4, 2004... La Rondine Royal Opera House Semele Coliseum Like many artists, Puccini seems happiest when creating beings whom he can proceed to subject to torture, while encouraging compassion and grief on the part of spectators. In this respect he...

Behaving badly.(Cinema)(Movie Review)
December 4, 2004... The Merchant of Venice PG, selected cinemas There has never been a film of The Merchant of Venice before. This is not surprising. Different Shakespeare plays give trouble to different ages: we are not at ease with Measure for Measure, The...

Beyond the call of duty.(Radio)
December 4, 2004... Fortunately, I have never fought in a war or served with the armed forces. I can't say I regret this as I am by no means certain I would have been any good at it. Nor do I know if I would have been capable of acts of courage. Reporting wars is...

Who dares wins.(Television)
December 4, 2004... Two programmes this week made the case that popular music has taken over the tradition of the great classical composers. In Howard Goodall's Twentieth Century Greats (Channel 4, Saturday) the composer told us that modern 'serious' composers had...

Pressure points.(The turf)
December 4, 2004... Cricketer and racing fan Keith Miller, who died recently, had flown Mosquitoes over Germany during the war and it gave him a perspective. 'When athletes these days talk of pressure,' he declared, 'they only reveal what they don't know of life....

Grubby but great.(High life)
December 4, 2004... There they were, two new books side by side, my welcoming presents. Paul Johnson's delightful childhood memoir next to Alistair Home's Friend or Foe, his Anglo-Saxon history of France, as good a reason to return to grubby old London as I can...

See how they fly ...(Low life)
December 4, 2004... My Mum thinks nothing of poisoning animals. "How can you, as a born-again Christian, justify poisoning God's creatures?' I ask her, sanctimoniously, as she unpicks the braiding on another kilogram bag of rodent poison. But she just laughs gaily...

Speed eating.(Singular life)
December 4, 2004... New York Thanksgiving is a bigger marathon than Christmas. Maybe because the holiday lasts only four days instead of 12. Thus Americans feel obliged to cram as many lunches and dinners as possible into that shorter period. It's a form of...

Heartbreaker.(Bridge)
December 4, 2004... WHENEVER I'm about to give up on a 'double-dummy' bridge puzzle--i.e., one in which you are shown all four hands--I force myself to imagine that I'm locked in a cell and won't be released until I get the answer: surely if I think long and hard...

Restaurants.
December 4, 2004... Off to Ubon, sister restaurant to the famed Japanese fusion establishment Nobu, which is Nobu spelled backwards. No one had to point that out to me, by the way. I spotted it all by myself, which I think proves what I have said all along: I'm a...

Garry's gold.(Chess)
December 4, 2004... Over the past two years Garry Kasparov appeared to have lost the plot. Younger opponents, such as Radjabov, were treating him with scant lack of respect and his habitual run of first prizes had been gradually drying up. Now, though, a...

Stormy weather.(Competition)
December 4, 2004... In Competition No. 2369 you were invited to submit extracts from an imaginary diary during a period of civil convulsion and anarchy in this country. Though I was thinking of future disturbances, I was quite willing to accept historic...

1963: searching.(Crossword)
December 4, 2004... Brewer confirms that seven unclued lights had a common objective; this is sign!lied in the grid by a seven-letter word reading anticlockwise in an appropriate part of the perimeter. ACROSS 4 Action around manor house before noon with...

The Alex-Arsene show.(Spectator Sport)
December 4, 2004... I fancy football's most satisfying kick of the year has not been any particular jingo-jangle or hype-hype hooray on the pitch itself, but the cold-eyed gunslingers' rivalry between two middle-aged obsessives --Sir Alex Ferguson and Monsieur...

Dear Mary.(Your Problems Solved)
December 4, 2004... Q. At 50, I was entitled to retirement which left me free to start an easier career and I got a job as a driver/valet to a young Saudi Arabian who owns a racing stud. I enjoy the work and we get on well. As is correct, I call him 'Sir' and he...

Portrait of the week.
December 11, 2004... The Army Board approved a scheme to amalgamate all 19 single-battalion regiments into 'super regiments'. The BBC is to get rid of 3,000 staff in three years to save 320 million [pounds sterling]. The Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution...

Free the BBC.
December 11, 2004... If anyone needed convincing of the BBC's pathological self-importance, proof has been provided by the corporation's news coverage of its own reorganisation. On Tuesday, a day on which back-bench Labour MPs threatened a revolt against David...

Diary.
December 11, 2004... I was in Woolworths last Friday when a woman hit her little child across the head. Quite a few of us saw what she did, but none of us did anything. To be fair, it wasn't a hard blow and the victim didn't burst into tears, but it was shocking....

New laws are not going to make us safer.(Politics)
December 11, 2004... There is a contrast between John Monckton and almost everyone who has written about his murder. He was better prepared for his death than they were. He believed in divine grace and in eternal life. He was certain that the victories of evil are...

The Spectator's notes.
December 11, 2004... Muriel Cullen, who died last week, aged 83, was the elder and only sister of Margaret Thatcher. Living happily with her husband on his well-run farm in Essex, she showed not the slightest desire to be famous. I found her fascinating, though. In...

How not to run a country: in the first interview since he delivered his report, Lord Butler tells Boris Johnson that Britain suffers from an overmighty executive bringing in 'a huge number of extremely bad Bills'.(Interview)(Cover Story)
December 11, 2004... If you, like me, had gone charging up the stairs of The Spectator last Tuesday afternoon, and if you had rounded the corner to see the noble profile of Lord Butler of Brockwell, silvery, craggy, radiating patience and integrity as he sat on the...

An Englishman's home ...
December 11, 2004... COULD YOU LEAVE THE TELE' A MOMENT. I WANT TO SEE THE END OF THIS PROGRAMME [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Gunning for Kofi: Martin Walker says that the UN oil-for-food scandal is as much about the anger of US nationalists as it is about bribes.
December 11, 2004... Washington Two of the world's most impressive spin machines are locked in deadly combat. On the one side is the mob that Hillary Clinton once called 'the vast right-wing conspiracy', a bunch of conservative US senators and congressmen,...

Fits of morality: Rod Liddle on the idiocy of trying to bring down politicians for mere peccadillos while overlooking their real offences.
December 11, 2004... The government continues to use very, very careful language while trying to explain away its alleged role in the coup against the president of Equatorial Guinea, Teodoro Obiang. Last week the shadow foreign secretary, Michael Ancram, tabled the...

Help mothers by cutting taxes: Heather McGregor argues that both the government and the opposition have got child care badly wrong.
December 11, 2004... My nanny earns a basic salary of 240 [pounds sterling] a week. Doesn't sound too much to pay for the care of my children? That's net, of course. So gross it up and add employer's National Insurance, and we get to a monthly figure of 1,440...