Spectator articles from February 2003

Spectator archives from February 2003

Portrait of this week.
February 1, 2003... Mr. Tony Blair, the Prime Minister, decided to fly to Camp David for talks with President George Bush of the United States about the war against Iraq. Mr Jack Straw, the Foreign Secretary, said: 'The Iraqi regime is responding to resolution...

The case for action.(Brief Article)
February 1, 2003... There are some for whom George W. Bush--or any other Republican president, for that matter--will always be a gun-slinging cowboy bursting through the swing doors of some saloon and firing off for the hell of it. For them, the American President...

Diary.
February 1, 2003... I was brought up to pay little attention to vegetables, apart from beetroot, which was served every day, and carrots, of which we had two each on a Sunday, on the grounds that they enabled Spitfire pilots to see in the dark. And then last week...

If the Tories want to win the asylum debate, they must trust their own instincts. (Politics).(Brief Article)
February 1, 2003... In the aftermath of September 11 we all instinctively felt that the world had utterly changed. In Britain at any rate that turned out not to be the case. After the initial shock, things carried on to some extent as before. But the return...

The fruits of victory: Tony Blair's visit to Camp David comes at a time when we are riding high in America. Christopher Caldwell says that by backing Bush, the the Prime Minister is likely to make Britain a Great Power once more.
February 1, 2003... Washington DC GEORGE W. BUSH announced during his State of the Union message that America and its allies will disarm Iraq with or without the UN. If America, as appears increasingly likely, gets war, it will be thanks in large part to Tony...

Mind your language.(Brief Article)
February 1, 2003... THERE is a new kind of utterance that I cannot quite classify. The pattern is: `How weird is that?' It has the form of a question but is enunciated like an exclamation, as if it were a blunder for: `How weird that is!' Certainly it does not...

Loony meets Butcher: Rod Liddle on the naivety of those who think Tony Benn is just a charming old leftie.
February 1, 2003... NOW that Dr Blix has done his work, how will Saddam Hussein cope with the latest threat from the West to both his political stability and his sanity? It seems that, as a softening-up exercise before vaporising Baghdad with expensive ordnance,...

It's time for alumni preference: American universities raise billions, says Rachel Johnson, by discreetly favouring the offspring of those who give.
February 1, 2003... Q. Are a student's chances of admission enhanced if a relative has attended Harvard? A. The application process is the same for all candidates. Among a group of similarly distinguished applicants, the daughters and sons of alumni/ae may...

How welfare killed Victoria: officials didn't visit the doomed eight-year-old, says Daniel Kruger. They went to a seminar on child protection.
February 1, 2003... A LITTLE noticed omission from last November's Queen's Speech, setting out the legislative programme for 2003, was the long-awaited Corporate Manslaughter Bill. This was going to bring to book, on the grounds of the `failure of systems...

Wine club correction.(Correction Notice)
February 1, 2003... THE order form for last week's wine club listed the Chateau Musar 1997 as a white wine. It should have appeared with the reds.

Korea opportunities; journalists are banned from entering the Stalinist world of Kim Jong-Il, so Julian Manyon went there as a businessman.
February 1, 2003... Beijing WE were halfway across the narrow pontoon bridge on the Tumen river which separates China from North Korea in a remote area not far from Vladivostok when I reflected that what we were doing was completely mad. By then, however, it...

Second opinion.(Brief Article)
February 1, 2003... THE absence of a dynamic economy is a terrible thing. It means that, round here at least, evil is the root of all money. I am not referring only or even mainly to pimps and drug-dealers. Far from it; I mean the professional classes. The...

Men who want aids: Matthew Laza talks to the young homosexuals trying to find lovers who will infect them with HIV.
February 1, 2003... THE posting on the Internet message board is headlined, `I want lots of Christmas Gifts: Leeds UK'. The message wasn't left by a child who had been anxious to maximise his return from Father Christmas. It had been posted by Jon, a gay librarian...

Ancient & modern.(Brief Article)
February 1, 2003... WHAT is it in our interests to do about immigration? The ancient Athenians came up with an interesting answer. The reason for Athens' control of immigrants (metoikoi, `those who change their habitation', metics) was suspicion of aliens (war...

When Paris was the laundry capital of the civilised world. (And Another Thing).(Brief Article)
February 1, 2003... Writing about the colour of doves last week reminded me that, when I was 17 and an Oxford freshman in 1946, my passionate desire was to possess a three-piece flannel suit in dove-grey, as worn by Sebastian Flyte in the novel everyone was then...

Great British disease. (Letters).(Letter to the Editor)
February 1, 2003... Sir: The statistics that Anthony Browne cites (`How the government endangers British lives', 25 January) for HIV and tuberculosis among Britain's immigrant population are valid arguments for North American-style health checks for prospective...

Savings in the house. (Letters).(Letter to the Editor)
February 1, 2003... Sir: Peter Oborne (Politics, 25 January) writes of housing allowances wrongly claimed by Michael Trend, MP. Over the years, Members of Parliament have awarded themselves a variety of emoluments: incidental expenses provision, staffing...

Let's bury the Lib Dems. (Letters).(Letter to the Editor)
February 1, 2003... Sir: Simon Heifer ('The dustbin party', 18 January) says that disaffected Tory voters should not look towards the Lib Dems. As a person who left the Tories in 1996 for the Lib Dems, I can only say that Mr Heffer's analysis is spot-on. Lib Dem...

Flood facts. (Letters).(Letter to the Editor)
February 1, 2003... Sir: Rod Liddle (Thought for the day, 18 January) clearly subscribes to the old dictum not to let the facts get in the way of a good story. I understand that he may well not be familiar with Uckfield and Buxted, but, if he was, he would...

Bunyan in Oz. (Letters).(Letter to the Editor)
February 1, 2003... Sir: Peter Hitchens (`A labour of loathing', 18 January) asserts that Philip Pullman is writing a sort of inversion of C.S. Lewis's Narnia books, tracking them but inverting values and incidents that work their way out in the books and so...

Taki nonsense. (Letters).(Letter to the Editor)
February 1, 2003... Sir: I did enjoy reading Taki's unusually perceptive notes on the root causes of British thuggery (High life, 11 January). I had no idea that social problems in the United Kingdom could be attributed largely to some people having dark skin....

Is it my imagination, or is the Sun getting smuttier? (Media Studies).(British periodical)(Brief Article)
February 1, 2003... A couple of weeks ago I promised that this column would keep a watchful eye on Rebekah Wade, the new editor of the Sun. As is so often the case, the first piece of evidence is right before our eyes, in the pages of Who's Who. But before we get...

The day I had to pour soup over a fire in Hugh Trevor-Roper's kitchen. (Shared Opinion).(Brief Article)
February 1, 2003... Hugh Trevor-Roper long refused to write his memoirs. Eventually, the firm of Weidenfeld persuaded him, if he was not going to write them, to speak them. The recipient of his reminiscences was to be a tape recorder and I. He agreed to talk...

Fasten your seat-belts--the captain has told us that there is no cause for alarm. (City And Suburban).(Brief Article)
February 1, 2003... Now that is worrying. Downing Street has put out a statement, telling us not to worry about the stock market. In this country, says the Prime Minister's spokesman, the fundamentals are sound. At about the same stage of the great bear market of...

Our longest peace.(Book Review)
February 1, 2003... THE STRUGGLE FOR EUROPE: THE HISTORY OF THE CONTINENT SINCE 1945 by William Hitchcock Profile, 25 [pounds sterling], pp. 513, ISBN 1861972334 Has anybody ever struggled for Europe? They might have struggled for British Ulster or...

Every fair from fair sometime declines.(Book Review)
February 1, 2003... HARD WORK: LIFE IN LOW-PAY BRITAIN by Polly Toynbee Bloomsbury, 6.99 [pounds sterling], pp. 256, ISBN 0747564159 Polly Toynbee describes herself as `profoundly anti-religious', but she had the energy and curiosity to accept an...

A selection of recent paperbacks.
February 1, 2003... Non-fiction: Don Quixote's Delusions by Miranda France, Phoenix, 7.99 [pounds sterling] The Kitchen and The Cook by Nicholas Freeling, Big Cat Press, 8.99 [pounds sterling] Britons by Linda Colley, Pimlico, 12.50 [pounds sterling]...

The charm of the commonplace.(Book Review)
February 1, 2003... A BOX OF MATCHES by Nicholson Baker Chatto, 10 [pounds sterling], pp. 178, ISBN 070116977X Where other contemporary American novelists, mandarin or popular, like to write about war in South-east Asia, corruption in the boardroom,...

The high price of civil security.(Book Review)
February 1, 2003... ASPECTS OF HOBBES by Noel Malcolm Clarendon, 40 [pounds sterling], pp. 656, ISBN 0199247145 Hobbes is one of the very greatest political philosophers of all times, Noel Malcolm one of his most highly esteemed contemporary...

Defying vertigo and the void.(Book Review)
February 1, 2003... TO REACH THE CLOUDS by Philippe Petit Faber, 12.99 [pounds sterling], pp. 227, ISBN 0571217702 It is lucky for us common mortals that Philippe Petit is a tightrope-walker who can write. Blondin, the funambule of Niagara Falls...

Recent crime novels.
February 1, 2003... For the last few years Ruth Rendell has used her Chief Inspector Wexford detective novels to explore social issues that have been much in the papers. This has unfortunately made for unoriginal story lines with obvious villains in an all too...

Jesus in Nigeria.
February 1, 2003... Jesus in Nigeria Let him so keen for casting the first stone Direct a fast ball right between her eyes, So it might be from one quick burst of bone, Not from a mass of bruises, that she dies. I'm pleased to see, of...

Their man in London.
February 1, 2003... This foreword to the new edition of Michael Bloch's Ribbentrop is the last essay written for publication by Lord Dacre before his death on 26 January. When Hitler became Chancellor of Germany in January 1933, his future political programme...

Standing eye to eye with death: Tristan Garel-Jones, taurine correspondent of The Spectator, on the fascination of the corrida. (Arts).
February 1, 2003... Recently I had reason to open my copy of the collected works of the Mexican poet, Octavio Puz, given to me by Chris Patten. The inscription reads: `With much affection and a reminder of the world beyond the gates: (A curious) November 1990.'...

Provocative touch. (Exhibitions).(Giorgio de Chirico and the Myth of Ariadne)
February 1, 2003... Giorgio de Chirico and the Myth of Ariadne (Estorick Collection, till 13 April) Giorgio de Chirico (1888-1978) is one of those artists people like to pronounce over. The early work is generally praised, and the later disparaged, but to...

Conventional problem. (Theatre).(Brief Article)
February 1, 2003... The Tempest (Old Vic) The Duchess of Malfi (Lyttelton) Road (Lyric Hammersmith) The majority of my colleagues have been going gaga about Michael Grandage's production of The Tempest. According to Charles Spencer in the Telegraph,...

What a bargain. (Pop music).(Brief Article)
February 1, 2003... It was sad to hear of Maurice Gibb's death. Already the backtracking has begun. For decades the Bee Gees were written off by critics as a joke--meaningless songs in very high voices, as the parody went. Foolish clothes, unfortunate teeth and...

Rare inspiration. (Opera).(Brief Article)
February 1, 2003... Die Zauberflote (Royal Opera House) Khovanshchina (Coliseum) One of the goals of my opera-going life is to see an adequate production of The Magic Flute, one that doesn't find it necessary to make the aspirations of the hero and...

Fighting talk. (Television).
February 1, 2003... I don't want to sound too optimistic in case the Eumenides get me but I think I might have had the idea which will rescue me from doom. Better still, it might ruin the lives of everyone on the jealousy-list I compiled last month, causing them...

Remarkable maverick. (Radio).(Brief Article)
February 1, 2003... It has long been my view--and the disillusioned and cynical will not dissuade me--that to be a Member of Parliament is not only a noble calling but an enjoyable one. I formed this opinion soon after visiting Westminster as a BBC journalist and...

Winning worries. (The turf).(Brief Article)
February 1, 2003... Richard Phillips has long believed, along with Sir Mark Prescott, that `a happy trainer is a bad trainer'. Perhaps that is what makes him at times sound like a youthful understudy to Walter Matthau, determined to accentuate the negative. At...

Rival attractions. (Hunting).(Brief Article)
February 1, 2003... Is there the perfect hunt, the epitome of the sport? The more I find out about it, the less I think there is. Is it hounds or run or ride or country or company or quantity killed that counts? It is a matter of taste. But just as Michelin...

Funerals and friends. (High life).
February 1, 2003... Taki Gstaad I finally did not go to Gianni Agnelli's funeral. When I say finally, I mean I was on my way, but then I began to think. Gianni died early Friday morning, the funeral was on Sunday. There was no time for people to be...

Living dangerously. (Low life).(Brief Article)
February 1, 2003... Sharon's been at home for a fortnight trying to write the final 5,000-word essay of her two-year social work diploma course. She's been at it day and night. Fortunately, she's currently barred from the only pub in town worth going to, so it's...

The quality of mercy. (Singular life).(Brief Article)
February 1, 2003... I am sitting on a cream sofa in the evening sunset of Florida. Next to me is the man who killed Hermann Goering--or rather helped him to kill himself. Some received wisdom says that Goering committed suicide without aid, but this is not the...

Cosi fan tutte. (Bridge).(Brief Article)
February 1, 2003... IT'S not often that players want me to write about their mistakes, but such is my friend Julian Cotton's eagerness to appear in a bridge column that he suggested I write up a hand he misplayed the other day. Indeed, he's so keen to appear that...

Rope trick. (Chess).
February 1, 2003... THE Indian grandmaster Viswanathan Anand has scored one of the greatest triumphs of his career by taking clear first prize in the massively strong tournament at Wijk aan Zee, from which only Kasparov, Adams and Leko were absent. Various things...

Mnemonic. (Competition).(Brief Article)
February 1, 2003... Jaspitos IN COMPETITION NO. 2274 you were invited to supply a memory-assisting poem to help one remember a set of facts. The trouble with mnemonic rhymes is that they're damned hard to remember. I used to have them dinned into me when...

Crossword.(Brief Article)
February 1, 2003... 1599: Two-masters by Dumpynose A first prize of 30 [pounds sterling] and a bottle of Graham's exquisite ten-year-old Tawny Port (delicious drunk chilled) for the first correct solution opened on 17 February, with two runners-up prizes...

Soft hammers. (Spectator sport).(Brief Article)
February 1, 2003... IT IS one of the game's oldest jokes but it still produces a laugh or two. In the football version of `Deck of Cards', that hoary old chestnut from the Fifties pop charts, the narrator reminds listeners that `when I see the Four Queens, I think...

Dear Mary ... (Your Problems Solved).(Brief Article)
February 1, 2003... Q. The story of Red Chris in last week's issue brings to mind another tricky issue about house parties, and that is the subject of bringing presents. As a host who occasionally entertains in the country, I do not expect guests to arrive with a...

Portrait of the week.
February 8, 2003... Mr Tony Blair, the Prime Minister, returning from a meeting at the White House with President George Bush of the United States, said, `I believe there will be a second resolution,' referring to a further United Nations Security Council vote for...

The curse of management.(Brief Article)
February 8, 2003... Everyone knows that the National Health Service employs too many managers and too few nurses. Enter any saloon bar in the land and you will be told as much. But this popular wisdom finds shockingly emphatic confirmation in a new pamphlet,...

Diary.(Brief Article)
February 8, 2003... George Bush is a reformed alcoholic, and takes staying on the wagon seriously. I have recently discovered that you can't get a drink at his ranch in Crawford, Texas, since it's located in the dry gulch of prohibitionist counties. As we wait for...

Cook the Martyr now has the luxury of resigning on his own terms. (Politics).(Robin Cook)
February 8, 2003... There is a moment in the Uncle Remus stories when Brer Rabbit is finally cornered by Brer Fox, who genially informs his victim I'm going to barbecue you today, for sure.' Then Brer Rabbit started talking mighty humble. ...

Don't feel sorry for the city: as pensions continue to fall in value, jobs are disappearing in the City. But, says Martin Vander Weyer, the fattest cats are still spending millions on the good life; and the real victims are the prudent middle classes.
February 8, 2003... HERE are four connected facts. First, on Monday, Standard Life--one of Britain's most respected investment institutions--cut the value of its payouts to 2.3 million pension savers by 15 per cent. Second, some 30,000 people have lost their jobs...

Mind your language.(Brief Article)
February 8, 2003... `ARE you interested in penises, darling?' I asked my husband. `Not really, dear. Wrong end of the market for me. I did once do the week after Christmas in a pox clinic when I was young. Busy and dull. Why do you ask?' The reason I asked...

Let's quit the UN: Mark Steyn says America has no place in a body whose Human Rights Commission is headed by Colonel Gaddafi.
February 8, 2003... New Hampshire EARLIER this week, on NBC's Today Show, Katie Couric, America's favourite wake-up gal, saluted the fallen heroes of the Columbia: `They were an airborne United Nations--men, women, an African-American, an Indian woman, an...

A dodgy constitution: Paul Robinson on why Europe's constitutional convention is a bureaucrat's dream--unlike the Philadelphia Convention of 1787.
February 8, 2003... I ONCE heard of an Ivy League professor who had written 50 constitutions. All of them collapsed, including the one for the college boat club. If that gentleman is not now advising the Convention on the Future of Europe, someone very like him...

Who's Hugh? Bishop Montefiore talks to Mary Wakefield about his new book on the paranormal--and shows her his watercolours.(Hugh Montefiore)
February 8, 2003... THE country-and-western singer Kinky Friedman has a song called `They Ain't Making Jews Like Jesus Anymore'. `They don't turn the other cheek the way they done before,' sings Kinky. Had he met The Right Reverend Hugh Montefiore, the former...

Banned wagon: global.(Brief Article)
February 8, 2003... THE genius of modern Europe is to have honed protectionism to such an art that in the minds of many Europeans it is synonymous with civilisation itself. It is hard to imagine that some of Europe's greatest cities--Venice, Antwerp,...

Black is best: Rod Liddle does not want to be offensive but he believes that blacks are better at soccer than whites--and so does the FA.
February 8, 2003... HERE's something to be cheerful about. At an English Premiership football match last year, the fans of one London club were heard to be singing the following jolly refrain: `We all agree, our coons are better than your coons.' We should be...

Onan the librarian: with the BBC about to show a film about Philip Larkin, Robert Gore-Langton praises the poet who knew how to offend everyone.(Brief Article)
February 8, 2003... PHILIP LARKIN, the miserable old git, has never had it so good. Sir Tom Courtenay is about to play him on stage. Faber is reissuing his Collected Poems this month. And on television there's a new and (by all accounts) sympathetic film about...

Hugh Trevor-Roper and the Monks of Magdalen. (And Another Thing).(Brief Article)
February 8, 2003... Hugh Trevor-Roper was the unofficial but undisputed head of the history profession in England. I admired his wide learning and literary ability greatly, but always saw him as a comic figure, his abrasive, contemptuous and ultra-critical front...

Unless Piers Morgan is careful, Richard Desmond could buy the Mirror. (Media Studies).(Brief Article)
February 8, 2003... Piers Morgan, the editor of the Daily Mirror, is an opponent of the coming war against Iraq. Fair enough. Many of us are unhappy about it. But he has taken his opposition to extreme and, I would say, imprudent lengths. To use a military...

The answer to Tony Blair's problems is staring him in the face. (Another Voice).(Brief Article)
February 8, 2003... Brainwaves are unusual in the governance of men and it is rare that a knotty political problem invites a simple solution nobody had thought of before. But a conversation last week with The Spectator's newly appointed bullfighting correspondent...

Green fightback. (Letters).(Letter to the Editor)
February 8, 2003... From Mr Zac Goldsmith Sir: Lloyd Evans was apparently so agitated following lunch with various greens at The Spectator that he couldn't resist spilling the beans on a private conversation in last week's Mail on Sunday, even at the expense,...

Iraq's future. (Letters).(Letter to the Editor)
February 8, 2003... From Dr Franz Metzger Sir: I couldn't help wiping some tears of happy emotion from my cheeks when I read Mark Steyn's predictions of a golden future not only for the people of Iraq, but also for the whole Arab world once America had done...

Goering at Nuremberg. (Letters).(Letter to the Editor)
February 8, 2003... From Mr J.M. Carder Sir: What a scoop for Petronella Wyatt (Singular life, 1 February)! The mystery of how Goering obtained a cyanide capsule to avoid the gallows in Nuremberg in 1946 has puzzled historians ever since. The official report...

Bush and Blair. (Letters).(Letter to the Editor)
February 8, 2003... From Mr Andrew Rawnsley Sir: I'm always flattered to be quoted in your pages, but much less so when the quotation is inaccurate. Contra Christopher Caldwell (`The fruits of victory', 1 February), I have never written that `America cannot...

Minor worries. (Letters).(Letter to the Editor)
February 8, 2003... From Mr Richard Abram Sir: The spirit of the Climbie caseworkers (`How welfare killed Victoria', 1 February) is not confined to the social services. The other morning at rush hour, I reported to staff at my local railway station that three...

Art for the people. (Letters).(Letter to the Editor)
February 8, 2003... From Mr John V. Sheffield Sir: Philip Hensher's assertion (Books, 25 January) that art never belongs to anyone is rubbish. He says that it is not ours to lose or destroy--maybe so, but the Duke of Northumberland did neither with his...

Whiff of la dolce vita. (Letters).(Letter to the Editor)
February 8, 2003... From The Count Capponi Sir: What is lacking in Tobias Jones's book (Books, 25 January) is a more truthful description of Italian politics. No mention is made, so it seems, of the Mafia-like Italian judiciary, in the service of the former...

US universities. (Letters).(Letter to the Editor)
February 8, 2003... From Mr John Gadney Sir: Rachel Johnson (`It's time for alumni preference', 1 February) is not strictly correct when she suggests that `American universities do not depend on public money'. They do enjoy the enviable and substantial...

Pasiphae's progeny. (Letters).(Letter to the Editor)
February 8, 2003... From Mr James Mulraine Sir: The addition of Tristan Garel-Jones (Arts, 1 February) to The Spectator staff as taurine correspondent would seem, after the appointment of Charles Moore on hunting, to be a further strike at any remaining...

Wrong body part. (Letters).(Letter to the Editor)
February 8, 2003... From Mr Jonathan Bouquet Sir: Your esteemed media correspondent Stephen Glover (Media studies, 1 February) refers to a girl having `her bottom akimbo'. Apparently Mr Glover doesn't know his arse from his elbow. Jonathan Bouquet...

It's a miracle that these snowdrops return, so please don't jump up and down on them. (City and Suburban).(Brief Article)
February 8, 2003... It is nature's annual miracle. Peeping up above the frozen ground like snowdrops, here come the High Street banks to tell us that they have survived another year. Early-flowering varieties like Barclays and Lloyds will be with us next week, and...

A question of upbringing.(Book Review)
February 8, 2003... HITLER AND CHURCHILL by Andrew Roberts Weidenfeld, 18.99 [pounds sterling], pp. 202, ISBN 0297843303 Superficially, Hitler and Churchill resembled each other, in the way that two very powerful leaders will. In particular, as Andrew Roberts...

Too funny for words.(Book Review)
February 8, 2003... THIS IS CRAIG BROWN by Craig Brown Ebury Press, 12 [pounds sterling], pp. 467, ISBN 0091888077 Scanning the preface to this lavish selection of Craig Brown's journalism, I was reminded of an intensely embarrassing episode from time gone...

A picture that tells a story.(Book Review)
February 8, 2003... WHAT I LOVED by Siri Hustvedt Hodder, 14.99 [pounds sterling], pp. 370, ISBN 034068237X Can it be said that anyone is sane, that anyone is healthy--or does all life consist of degrees of illness and madness? Is love a kind of madness? Is...

Stopping short of omniscience.(Book Review)
February 8, 2003... READING CHEKHOV by Janet Malcolm Granta, 13.99 [pounds sterling], pp. 210, ISBN 1862075867 Although Janet Malcolm has written in depth about an extraordinary range of subjects, from psychoanalysis and photography through to literary...

Feeling good in one's skin.(Book Review)
February 8, 2003... RESPECT: THE FORMATION OF CHARACTER IN AN AGE OF INEQUALITY by Richard Sennett Allen Lane, 20 [pounds sterling], pp. 288, ISBN 071399617X Of all the unfashionable ideas you can think of, 'respect' looked least likely to make a comeback. To...

The hunter hunted.(Book Review)
February 8, 2003... LAND OF THE LIVING by Nicci French Michael Joseph, 16.99 [pounds sterling], pp. 320, ISBN 0718145186 Abbie Devereaux, the heroine of Land of the Living, finds herself hooded and bound and a prisoner of a man who is just a whispering voice....

I was a camera.(Book Review)
February 8, 2003... FROM LIFE by Victoria Olsen Aurum, 20 [pounds sterling], pp. 336, ISBN 1854108913 Julia Margaret Cameron is hip. This would not have astonished her--she had every confidence in her vision as a photographer--but for many decades she has...