Spectator articles from December 2008

Spectator archives from December 2008

This battle has just begun.
December 6, 2008... 'I was excited and delighted by it in that first Bombay minute,' says the narrator in Gregory David Roberts's great novel Shantaram. 'I know now that it's the sweet, sweating smell of hope, which is the opposite of hate.' It was hope that the...

Diary.
December 6, 2008... I've just emerged from the gym, winding down after a day's writing, when my son Sukhraj calls, alerting me to sudden news of explosions and fatalities in Mumbai. I rush home, change out of my tracksuit, and go into Television Centre at White...

The Damian Green affair shows us just how pathetically supine Parliament has become.(POLITICS)
December 6, 2008... Knowledge that a secret exists is half of the secret, and Westminster loves nothing more than guessing what a secret might be. When The Spectator's website revealed at 6 p.m. last Thursday that a major Conservative story was about to unfold,...

The Spectator's notes.
December 6, 2008... New Labour has always preserved from the hard Left the Leninist idea that the party (or, in Blair/ Brown theory, 'the project') is the only reality to be respected. All the other institutions of society--above all, Parliament--are...

[Cartoon].(Cartoon)
December 6, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] My Government...

Diary of a Notting Hill nobody.
December 6, 2008... MONDAY A few loose ends I'm still trying to get to the bottom of: 1) If Damian was running the mole--and there's no evidence to suggest he was but let's just say he might have been--then who was running Damian? Wonky Tom says it's Mrs...

The global force behind Mumbai's agony is in our midst: Stephen Schwartz and Irfan Al-Alawi say that LET--the Army of the Righteous--is a worldwide Islamist organisation which is well-established in Britain. The Mumbai atrocities are further proof that the march of Islamic extremism is the central fact of our time.
December 6, 2008... The usual suspects are declaring that the 'cause' of the Mumbai bombings was Kashmir or some other local grievance. But what happened in Mumbai was no more a local event than the 7 July 2005 attacks in London or the assault in Madrid on 11...

Flash Gordon.(Cartoon)
December 6, 2008... I'M CUTTING VAT BY 2 1/2% OK! PUNK! YOU OWE ME A LOT OF HIDDEN STEALTH TAXES! [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

They treat me more like a devil than a god': Lloyd Evans finds that Bernard-Henri Levy is not the ageing French dandy of caricature but a serious intellectual with views on everything from Barack Obama to the Muslim veil.(Interview)
December 6, 2008... Oh goody. He's late. Every journalist wants the interviewee to miss the appointment, if possible by several hours. It gives us the advantage and obliges our subject to apologise or face being lacerated in print for the transgression. French...

Mind your language.(Column)
December 6, 2008... I've been reading such a funny book that even my husband has stirred fitfully in his chair when my laughter breaks into his stertorous breathing. The book is nothing but a list of funny names. They are funny because they are true,...

What I learned from the Somali pirates: Aidan Hartley says that Somali piracy is very well-organised and efficient and is opposed publicly only by militant Muslims--who may yet seize power in Mogadishu.
December 6, 2008... The ceaseless piracy off Somalia's shores--another, Singaporean tanker was hijacked last week--is giving rise to a modern, real-life version of the novel Scoop. Evelyn Waugh's book is set in Africa's troubled state of Ishmaelia, where one...

New Sondheim: enjoy it while stocks last: Gerald Kaufman is enthralled by the first Sondheim premiere in 14 years. A minor work Road Show may be, but it is still worth much more than anyone else's musicals.
December 6, 2008... A Sondheim premiere in New York! Besotted fans of one of the four greatest-ever Broadway composer-lyricists (the others being Irving Berlin, Frank Loesser and Cole Porter, all, regrettably, dead) were resigned never to seeing another. I feared...

After Baby P: the crisis in child foster care: Mary Wakefield talks to a courageous woman who blew the whistle on the deep systemic failures in the foster care service--and whose only reward was to be hounded and vilified.
December 6, 2008... I spotted Sarah immediately, though I'd never seen her before and she was tucked in among the commuter crowds ebbing and flowing through Marylebone station. She walked differently from the rest, less preoccupied, more determined, and she...

The law applies to Damian Green, too: Rod Liddle is reluctant to join the journalistic herd in its unqualified outrage at the Tory MP's arrest. But it is certainly time to put the police under the microscope.(LIDDLE BRITAIN)
December 6, 2008... Great news--grooming is now a criminal offence. I've always had problems with it, frankly. When about to go out somewhere special for the evening my personal grooming consists of hacking at my face with the blunt Bic razor my wife keeps by the...

Nancy and the Keynesians.(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
December 6, 2008... Sir: Nancy Dell'Olio is a Keynesian ('John Maynard Keynes, my hero', 29 November), but if Keynes were alive today, he would be revising his doctrine. In the 1930s government expenditure was a much smaller proportion of GDP than it is today. So...

All Greek to Moore.(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
December 6, 2008... Sir: Charles Moore employs a more inaccurate term than he may appreciate when he describes the Greek Cypriot organisation EOKA as 'separatist'. In fact EOKA fought for enosis, Greek for union', and wanted to attach Cyprus to Greece. It would be...

Plane wrong.(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
December 6, 2008... Sir: This may be pedantic, but given the relevance and personal interest attributed by Charlotte Metcalf to the Spitfire in her article on Bremont watches (Christmas Gifts, 29 November), I am surprised at such a simple mistake: the plane...

Bloody brilliant.(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
December 6, 2008... Sir: Toby Young ('Status Anxiety', 29 November) tells of his daughter's present to him of a swear box. She has set an important precedent that deserves maximum support. Let there be such boxes in school classrooms and their considerable...

Not the embonpoint.(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
December 6, 2008... Sir: Dear Mary uses the word embonpoint to mean 'bosom'. It doesn't; the OED and Harrap's French-English Dictionary agree that it means 'plump' , 'stout' or 'well-covered'. Tom Jago London SW6

Letter of the law.(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
December 6, 2008... Sir: Following Charles Moore's comments about TV Licensing (The Spectator's Notes, passim), we would like to make clear that TV Licensing's operations strictly comply with the law. We are tightly regulated and take our obligation to act within...

An undignified part.(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
December 6, 2008... Sir: If Robert Peston is the only route through which the government is prepared to take a leak, which part of the body politic does that make him? Giles Rowe London SW12

To understand the true nature of history, let us start with the question of Napoleon's piles.(ANOTHER VOICE)
December 6, 2008... Cometh the hour, cometh the piles? Well, Wellington called Waterloo 'the closest run thing you ever saw in your life', and on the morning of battle, Napoleon was too exhausted and distracted by pain from his haemorrhoids to focus or to ride...

Plus ca change in the bustling hurly-burly of Westbourne Grove.(AND ANOTHER THING)
December 6, 2008... The chill winds are already blowing down Westbourne Grove as the recession takes hold. They would, wouldn't they? The Grove is a peculiarly fragile and sensitive street, and has been ever since it was set up in the 1850s. At one time it was...

The global currency crisis is still to come: Jonathan Ruffer argues that state bail-outs in response to the credit crunch could lead to yet another massive shock: a widespread collapse of currencies, and a new inflation.(BUSINESS)
December 6, 2008... Now that businessmen from Kazakhstan to California speak a single language, it's perhaps not surprising that we endured a Babel of borrowing over the past ten years. And like all towers which reach too high, it fell--and great was the fall of...

Ingots are just another commodity.(IS GOLD STILL A SAFE HAVEN?)
December 6, 2008... It would be hard to imagine a worse run of events for paper money. Investment banks such as Lehman Brothers have drowned in a sea of subprime debt. Building societies such as Bradford & Bingley, once so dull and safe they made fun of it in...

At last, a fine statue of Brian Clough--but still not even a plaque for Jesse Boot.(ROBERT BEAUMONT IN NOTTINGHAM)
December 6, 2008... 'All Nottingham has is Robin Hood--and he's dead,' said Brian Roy, a Dutch footballer who starred, briefly, for Nottingham Forest in the 1990s. Roy's assessment of this bleak East Midlands city, as wounding as Orson Welles's jibe about the...

The view from the middle lane.(The Hugo Young Papers: Thirty Years of British Politics--off the Record)(Book review)
December 6, 2008... THE HUGO YOUNG PAPERS: THIRTY YEARS OF BRITISH POLITICS--OFF THE RECORD by Hugo Young, edited by Ion Trewin Allen Lane, 30 [pounds sterling], pp. 834, ISBN 9781846140549 [telephone] 24 [pounds sterling] (plus 2.45 [pounds ...

Living the legend.(My Judy Garland Life)(Book review)
December 6, 2008... MY JUDY GARLAND LIFE by Susie Boyt Virago, 15.99 [pounds sterling], pp. 309, ISBN 9781844084111 12.79 [pounds sterling] (plus 2.45 [pounds sterling] p&p) 0870 429 6655 [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] The story of Judy Garland is a...

But where is Colonel Blimp?(Book review)
December 6, 2008... THE TRIUMPH OF MUSIC by Tim Blanning Allen Lane, 25 [pounds sterling], pp. 404, ISBN 9781846141782 [telephone] 20 [pounds sterling] (plus 2.45 [pounds sterling] p&p) 0870 429 6655 [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] This is an often...

Saints and sinners.(Buyers guide)
December 6, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] With the publication of their Christmas cookery books, Nigella, Jamie, Delia and Gordon all have a brand image, or a halo, to polish. Nigella's brand is greedy, kitsch, sexy and celebratory, and in Nigella Christmas...

At Home in Turkey.(Brief article)(Book review)
December 6, 2008... At Home in Turkey by Solvi dos Santos and Berrin Torolsan (Thames & Hudson, 24.95 [pounds sterling], pp. 192, ISBN 9780500514245) [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] If you can't afford the airfare you might take this delicious guided tour...

Dirty diggers.(The Buddha and Dr. Fuhrer)(Book review)
December 6, 2008... THE BUDDHA & DR FUHRER by Charles Allen Haus Publishing, 17.99 [pounds sterling], pp. 276, ISBN9781905791934 [telephone] 14.39 [pounds sterling] (plus 2.45 [pounds sterling] p&p) 0870 429 6655 [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] ...

A rose-tinted view of the bay.(The Ancient Shore)(Book review)
December 6, 2008... THE ANCIENT SHORE by Shirley Hazzard and Francis Steegmuller University of Chicago Press, 9.50 [pounds sterling], pp. 127, ISBN 9780226322018 [telephone] 8.40 [pounds sterling] (plus 2.45 [pounds sterling] p&p) 0870 429 6655 ...

Humph swings.(Last Chorus: An Autobiographical Medley)(Book review)
December 6, 2008... LAST CHORUS: AN AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL MEDLEY by Humphrey Lyttleton JR Books, 18.99 [pounds sterling], pp. 447, ISBN 9781906217181 [telephone] 15.19 [pounds sterling] (plus 2.45 [pounds sterling] p&p) 0870 429 6655 [ILLUSTRATION...

Differences and similarities.(West Workroom Towards a New Sobriety in Architecture Theory and Practice)(Book review)
December 6, 2008... WEST WORKROOM towards a new sobriety in architecture theory + practice by Paolo Conrad-Bercah + w office (including contributions from Daniel Sherer, Pierluigi Panza and George Baird) Charta Books Ltd, New York Edizioni, Charta, Milan...

Surprising literary ventures.(Willy and the Killer Kipper)(Brief article)(Book review)
December 6, 2008... WILLY AND THE KILLER KIPPER (1981) by Jeffrey Archer [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] 'It looks to me like Boris the Blue Whale,' said Rightwayup Bird. 'I have read all about him. He is one hundred feet long and weighs 150 tons.' ...

In perfect harmony: Henrietta Bredin talks to the conductor Brad Cohen, who mentored Alex James in Maestro.(ARTS)(Interview)
December 6, 2008... It is worth remembering that the BBC, despite its recent, excessively well-aired problems, gives us a great many stimulating, well-made programmes, on both radio and television. Rather surprisingly, given its format and the yawning,...

Poles apart.
December 6, 2008... Saul Steinberg: Illuminations Dulwich Picture Gallery, until 15 February 2009 Cartoons & Coronets: The Genius of Osbert Lancaster The Wallace Collection, until11 January 2009 Exhibitions 1 Saul Steinberg (1914-99) was born...

Luminous landscapes.
December 6, 2008... Oleg Vassiliev: recent Works Faggionato Fine Arts, 49 Albemarle Street, London W1, until 23 January 2009 [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] The septuagenarian Russian artist Oleg Vassiliev is exhibiting for the first time in London. Vassiliev...

Treasure trove.
December 6, 2008... Qatar's Museum of Islamic Art Islamic art is a fast growing subject of study. Too many countries are involved for it to be categorised like French or Japanese art. In New York and London Islamic art tends to be confined to a section of an...

A rich legacy.
December 6, 2008... The Philippe de Montebello Years: Curators Celebrate Three Decades of Acquisitions Metropolitan Museum, until 1 February 2009 Philippe de Montebello retires from the position of Director at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York,...

Crumblies' gig.(Pop)
December 6, 2008... It all started earlier this year, when my friend Chris managed to get four tickets for the first Leonard Cohen concerts at the O2. 'There's one for you if you want it,' he said. Well, obviously I wanted it, but cash was a little short at the...

Flights of fancy.(Les Contes d'Hoffmann)(Opera review)
December 6, 2008... Les Contes d'Hoffmann Royal Opera Der fliegende Hollander Barbican [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Astonished delight was the first reaction, of everyone, I think, at the Royal Opera's latest revival of John Schlesinger's...

Bad neighbours.(Lakeview Terrace)(Movie review)
December 6, 2008... Lakeview Terrace 15, Nationwide Summer 15, Key Cities Lakeview Terrace is one of those menacing, neighbour-from-hell type thrillers with Samuel L. Jackson playing Abel Turner, an LAPD cop who bristles with hostility from the...

Relative values.(Theater review)
December 6, 2008... The Family reunion Donmar Chicken Hackney Empire August: Osage County Lyttelton [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] T.S. Eliot was in his fifties when he turned to the theatre. What's amazing about his 1939 play, The Family...

Food for thought.(Television)(Viewpoint essay)
December 6, 2008... My favourite programme last week was France on a Plate (BBC4, Sunday) in which Dr Andrew Hussey investigated the link between gastronomy and la gloire; French glory and destiny. He began with a recreation of Francois Mitterrand's last meal,...

Triple whammy.(High life)(Viewpoint essay)
December 6, 2008... New York A funny thing happened to me on my way out from a party on 17 November in London. I was temporarily confused until I ran into Naomi Campbell in the Royal Hospital Gardens. She was carrying some packages into her car and offered me...

Welcome to Cairo.(Low life)
December 6, 2008... We first encountered Ahmed, our dragoman in Cairo, when he stepped forward to greet us at passport control. He was dressed soberly in dark suit, black tie, black shoes. Shaved head. Designer glasses. His manner was brisk and unsmiling. But now...

Battling the blues.(Real life)(Viewpoint essay)
December 6, 2008... My friend Stephen rang me in a tremendous huff, just as I was trying to eat a mince pie. 'I no longer wish to be a part of this society. You can cease referring to me as a British citizen. I no longer accede to the precepts of this system we...

Fat chance!(Bridge)(Brief article)
December 6, 2008... Sally Brock, World Champion, European Champion and part of the Women's Team that brought back the Gold Medal for England in the recent Beijing Mind Sports Games, has started to play rubber bridge at TGR's. Last week I cut into her game, playing...

Old is the new new: and contemporary art is suddenly yesterday's thing.(Antiques)
December 6, 2008... Damien Hirst's two-day auction of spanking new works at Sotheby's in September signalled the end of an era. Our idea of what is desirable has changed dramatically since. 'The definition of luxury today is something that can't be made in one...

Play time.(GADGETS)(Viewpoint essay)
December 6, 2008... Living in an all-male household (husband, two sons, cosseted cat) has tended to colour my perception of technology. Over the past two decades or so of explosive growth in technical wizardry, gadgets have inevitably been geared towards the men...

Woman's hour.(Watches)(Viewpoint essay)
December 6, 2008... Of late I have had a number of men getting in touch with me to ask which watches to buy their wives. This is one of those perennial questions that has vexed mankind ever since, well--the invention of time. You can just imagine Marc Antony...

Bob Wade.(CHESS)
December 6, 2008... The sad news has come in that Bob Wade, chess tutor to generations of leading British players has died after a short illness at the age of 87. Bob won the British Championship twice and was awarded the OBE for services to chess. This week and...

What happened next?(COMPETITION)
December 6, 2008... In Competition No. 2573 you were invited to submit the synopsis of a sequel-that-was-never-written to a well-known novel. Sequels to books and films have a poor reputation, the assumption being that, with the odd exception (The Godfather:...

1893: Urban tag.(CROSSWORD)(Brief article)
December 6, 2008... The unclued Across lights are of a kind and each can be paired with an unclued Down light, (one of two words); all are verifiable in Brewer. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Solution to 1890: Tarn it The unclued lights are three trios of...

In a recession, head for the mall where you can buy seven Crunchies for 1.49 [pounds sterling].(STATUS ANXIETY)(Viewpoint essay)
December 6, 2008... I was awestruck. As a long-term resident of west London, I had been looking forward to my first glimpse of this emporium, but it was even better than I imagined. I simply had no idea shopping centres could be this good. From now on there would...

Ancient & modern.
December 6, 2008... In the last two columns we have considered Barack Obama as novus homo and orator. But what about his mixed race? The racist seeks the cause for the differences between groups of people in either physiological or genetic determinism. The...

Bring on the Six Nations.(SPECTATOR SPORT)
December 6, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] There's got to be some direct relationship these days between the bad behaviour of the Twickenham crowd and the feebleness of the English team. When the Twickers faithful launched into an insanely enthusiastic...

Dear Mary.(YOUR PROBLEMS SOLVED)
December 6, 2008... Q. I have a well-established and generally wonderful cleaning woman whose job, in her view, includes chatting. This was fine in the past when my children were out at school all day but now my 16-year-old son is attending sixth-form college and...

Help Purnell.(James Purnell)
December 13, 2008... It is one of the oddities of politics that a Labour government can sometimes get away with announcing policies which, had they come from the mouth of a Conservative minister, would have provoked howls of anger. So it is with welfare...

Diary.
December 13, 2008... Doing the rounds of various Christmas parties including the Arts Council and the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, I can report that there was not a glass of champagne in sight. This year it's all white wine and water. The collective...

Brown's Britain is broke and creeping towards the ignominy of an IMF bail-out.(POLITICS)(Gordon Brown)
December 13, 2008... Before a country has to beg the IMF for a bail-out, there are normally several clear warning signs. Its national debt needs to be vast--say, several times its entire economic output. Next, it becomes dependent on that debt, as its government is...

The spectator's notes.
December 13, 2008... It is a continuing pleasure of our parliamentary life that no one really quite knows what the rules are. In the Damian Green affair, learned opinions differ about whether or not Parliament can exclude the police from the premises when pursuing...

[Cartoon].(Cartoon)
December 13, 2008... Health 'n' Safety won't let me go down chimneys. Little Scrote has been let out of prison for Christmas. On the way home he nicks a few things! [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Even Little Scrote believe in Santa. He dumps his swag and puts...

Diary of a Notting Hill nobody.
December 13, 2008... MONDAY Mr Maude ecstatic about the polls. Says it's the most significant narrowing he has seen in all his years of being miserable about the possibility of the Tories ever winning again. 'Only four points ahead! We're doomed! DOOMED I tell...

The real lesson of this fiasco is that we need elected police chiefs: the Commons row on Monday over the Damian Green arrest was a distraction from the most pressing issue, say Daniel Hannan and Douglas Carswell. We already have a politicised police: so let the voters decide.(Cover story)
December 13, 2008... Perhaps now you'll understand what we've been banging on about, we localists. For the better part of a decade, we've campaigned to place the police under elected sheriffs. Some of our chief constables, we contended, had cast off the cables that...

Flash Gordon.(Cartoon)
December 13, 2008... MILLSTONE WORKSHOP LET A MOVE ON! I WANT EVERY HARD-WORKING FAMILY TO HAVE ONE AROUND THEIR NECKS BY CHRISTMAS. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

The prospects for a proud Olympic legacy are bleak: John Patten, an Olympics adviser, warns that there is still much strategic thinking to be done for 2012--not to mention the lax anti-terror measures at the construction sites.
December 13, 2008... I had to be forcibly persuaded on to the rugby field at school. Now, to my amazement, I find myself advising the British Olympic Association. I sympathise with friends who become quite hysterical at the idea of my rubbing shoulders with Sir...

Ancient & modern.
December 13, 2008... Andrew Motion's tenure as Poet Laureate is about to end, and the search for a successor has begun. It is accompanied with the usual tidal wave of claptrap about this not being 'the sort of job which any real poet would want' and the importance...

Things we'll really all be better off without: Venetia Thompson and Rory Sutherland list the pointless luxuries and trends that will, quite rightly, be culled by the recession. Here are 13 reasons to be cheerful this Christmas.
December 13, 2008... Most journalists have spoken of the financial crisis as evidence of a failure of capitalism. But is it? Or is this kind of reversal in fact necessary if capitalism is to work at all? After all, a free-market economy doesn't do a perfect job of...

I am ready to go to prison for hamster murder: James Delingpole is threatened by the RSPCA after releasing a savage pet into the park, and marvels at another encroachment on freedom of speech by the nanny state.(Viewpoint essay)
December 13, 2008... RSPCA Press Office Dear James, I'm sure you will not be surprised to learn that the RSPCA has received a complaint following your column dated 21 November. We were surprised, however, that it was felt appropriate to trivialise and...

Mind your language.(Column)
December 13, 2008... Cliches gather on the tide and stick on the shingle of daily life like tarred bladder-wrack. A curious species of cliche sets a stereotyped pattern, into which words may be fitted to taste. A particularly annoying example, because it has...

Obama is just Bryan Adams without music: O'ar Pali talks to the ageing Canadian rocker and realises that the President-elect has merely emulated the pious pop-star rhetoric that has made Adams a global brand.(Interview)
December 13, 2008... It would be no real surprise to pick up the first issue of The Spectator from 1828 and find a review of a Bryan Adams show: he is one of those performers who is just there, and (it seems) always has been. Unless you were on a different planet...

The White House will be run like Chicago: Clinton brought Arkansas to Washington, and Texas followed Bush. Now, says Alexandra Starr, Obama is bringing the take-no-prisoners politics of Al Capone's city to the Beltway.
December 13, 2008... Washington may not have had an architectural makeover in more than two centuries, but the city's political culture has shown a chameleon-like ability to change with each incoming administration. When Bill Clinton arrived from Little Rock,...

Silence over Mumbai.(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
December 13, 2008... Sir: If Britain is still a safe haven for Lashkar-e-Taiba and Deobandi sympathisers ('The global force behind Mumbai's agony in our midst', 6 December), this must place a big question mark on the government's policy of dealing with home-grown...

Al Jazeera's 'attackers'.(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
December 13, 2008... Sir: A shop assistant who is offhand is readily described as 'rude'; the person who puts his feet on a train seat attracts the word 'lout'; similarly, a threatening, vomiting drunk in the street earns the label of 'yob' or 'thug', depending on...

Prop forward.(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
December 13, 2008... Sir: Like Mr Saunders (Letters, 6 December) I was irritated to see the obvious misdescription of what looks like a Yak-52 as a 'Spitfire' in the article on Nick and Giles English. It was a particularly sad mistake in the context of the article...

We need those Sarahs.(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
December 13, 2008... Sir: The remarkable and admirable Sarah ('After Baby P: the crisis in child care', 6 December) not only analysed and acted in the best interest of her own integrity and situation, she also diagnosed its wider significance. Namely, that...

Mill in France.(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
December 13, 2008... Sir: In his review of The British in France Raymond Carr (Books, 29 November) states that J.S. Mill never settled in France. This is not true. He lived in France in the years before his death. His body is buried in Avignon. The Dutch historian...

Name that tune.(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
December 13, 2008... Sir: In his praise of Sondheim, Gerald Kaufman ('A brand new Sondheim musical', 6 December) narrows the field by comparing him with other composer-lyricists and then widens it with his conclusion that Sondheim's work is 'worth x times as much...

Over the Moonie.(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
December 13, 2008... Sir: Like Matthew Parris (Another Voice, 22 November) I discovered, travelling to Australia, that time does not change according to zone, season, alcohol, whistling, thumb-twiddling or any other influence that we might impose on it. On a flight...

It is very British to pass a law making it illegal to create a nuclear explosion.(SHARED OPINION)(Viewpoint essay)
December 13, 2008... I dread to think why a Liberal Democrat would want to impersonate a traffic warden. It wouldn't just be to get free parking. Not with them. It would have to be a sex thing. Some kind of NCP-themed bondage dungeon; an underground den kitted out...

A simple explanation for the origins of the universe--and us too.(AND ANOTHER THING)
December 13, 2008... Some people maintain that, in the age of the internet and Google, public lectures are an outmoded way of acquiring knowledge. I don't agree. They demand effort to get to, fighting London's horrid traffic, crowded tubes, parking problems etc.,...