Spectator articles from February 2007

Spectator archives from February 2007

Things get better - for betting.
February 3, 2007... In a free society, people are at liberty to gamble, much as they are at liberty to drink alcohol, smoke cigarettes and engage in other practices which, if indulged to excess, can have terrible consequences. Gambling has wrecked lives and...

DIARY.(column writing)(Column)
February 3, 2007... There are a few fantasy gigs around, those jobs which we minor celebrities know deep down that we're never going to be offered, but which we prepare for anyway, just in case. Appearing on Desert Island Discs, hosting Have I Got News For Yo u ,...

What loans-for-honours really shows is that nobody believes a word No. 10 says any more.(Lord Levy )
February 3, 2007... If nothing else, Lord Levy has at least learnt the etiquette of being investigated by police. When he was first detained last July, he contemptuously accused officers of using 'totally unnecessary' tactics. On Tuesday, he emerged from the...

THE SPECTATOR'S NOTES.(happenings in UK)(Viewpoint essay)
February 3, 2007... Will we look back on the last quarter of the 20th century as the only time since the Reformation when Roman Catholics have really been tolerated in Britain? During the long period in which Cardinal Basil Hume was Archbishop of Westminster, the...

DIARY OF A NOTTING HILL NOBODY.(British politics)(Column)
February 3, 2007... SUNDAY Hideous day of torment fielding non-stop calls from rude reporters asking, 'What's Dave got against Catholics?' and 'Does he support gay rights, or what?' (We should go ahead with Gids's plan to put the press through to a call centre in...

Look back in anger: how Tony Blair betrayed a generation of pupils.(Government aid to education)
February 3, 2007... Let us take the man at his word. 'We should start saying what we do mean, ' Tony Blair told his party in 1994. New Labour should promise only what it was sure it could deliver. And at the heart of those promises was education, education,...

A new home rich in history and genius.(Spectator moves to new building)
February 3, 2007... With its move into 22 Old Queen Street, The Spectator will occupy a house full of friendly ghosts and memories of grand occasions in the world of the arts in the first quarter of the 20th century. For this elegant mansion in Westminster was for...

Ancient & modern.(Roman empire and European Union)(Column)
February 3, 2007... Last time we saw how the Athenians always reverted to type when they established large-scale alliances with other Greek states: what started off as a free union of states pursuing mutual interests slowly turned into an empire run by the...

Memo to the new BBC chair (which won't be me).
February 3, 2007... I find it hard to overstate the importance of the BBC in ensuring a sense of continuity and cohesion in our national life. As an institution it is far from perfect, but it does continue to offer the possibility of an eventual victory for...

Sex offenders in schools? That's yesterday's news.(Paul Reeve )
February 3, 2007... Scandals have anniversaries, too, and another has just passed. In January 2006, it emerged that the Education Department (DfES) had authorised Paul Reeve - a man who had a police caution for viewing child pornography and was on the Sex...

Arrogant, not brave.(Letter to the editor)
February 3, 2007... From Jolyon Connell Sir: Michael Gove is heartened by the leftwing writers who have denounced Islamic terrorism rather than seeking to make excuses for it ('All hail the new anti-Islamist intelligentsia', 27 January). Fair enough. But he...

Blair-baiting.(Letter to the editor)
February 3, 2007... From Christopher Booker Sir: Charles Moore asks for help in refreshing his 'vivid memory' as to who said in 1997 that 'political satirists' supported Tony Blair so strongly that they couldn't imagine laughing at him (The Spectator's Notes, 27...

Not entirely Trujillo.(Letter to the editor)
February 3, 2007... From Stephen Schwartz Sir: Taki (High life, 27 January) should know that Rafael Leonidas Trujillo did not rename the Dominican Republic after himself - only its capital, before and after known as Santo Domingo and briefly as 'Ciudad Trujillo',...

The diamond conflict.(Letter to the editor)
February 3, 2007... From Eli Izhakoff Sir: Clemency Burton-Hill is quite right to condemn the illegal trade in conflict diamonds ('Blood Diamond should help Sierra Leone', 27 January). We share her sentiment that a single conflict diamond is one too many. However,...

On gay adoption, I long for true compromise. I fear the Catholic Church wants a fight.
February 3, 2007... Minette Marrin, the columnist with whom I most often agree, put it best in the Sunday Telegraph last week. Couldn't we just have fudged this gay adoption/Catholic objection thing, she asked? She herself, she said, supported the new...

The long haul for Britain's last industrial world leader.(Rolls-Royce Ltd.'s Mark Benton )
February 3, 2007... Mark Benton is quite clear why he followed his father into working for RollsRoyce; after three years toiling away as a roofer, he discovered that 'it's nice and warm in here. . . . Oops, perhaps I shouldn't have said that.' Benton, 28,...

Take control of your own streets.(traffic congestion taxation)
February 3, 2007... Councils the length and breadth of Britain are smelling the money Red Ken is making and talking of introducing congestion-charging schemes. Interest groups are starting to complain at the introduction of yet another tax on motoring. But...

The perma-bear who sees the ice melting.(Jeremy Grantham)
February 3, 2007... We're barely ten seconds into our interview when Jeremy Grantham, onetime bedpan salesman from Doncaster, now hugely successful US money manager, is off on a favourite tack - mixing it with his competitors in the investment world. In this case...

The benefits of privatising BA seem to have worn off - so why not do it again?(British Airways PLC)
February 3, 2007... It is exactly 20 years next week since British Airways was privatised. Arguably, it was the most successful of all the Thatcher-era privatisations. Under the redoubtable Lord King and his marketing-wizard sidekick Colin (now also...

Fishing for compliments.(Jardines de la Reina )
February 3, 2007... 'WHASSAMADDA? I tell you cast 12 metres, 1 o'clock. Why you cast 10 metres 12 o'clock? You think bone-fish eat with arse?' A torrent of furious and thankfully incomprehensible Spanish abuse follows. This is my first morning in the...

Talking about a revolution.
February 3, 2007... Part of the fun of visiting Venezuela is witnessing, at close quarters, the rapid descent into egomaniacal madness of its President, Hugo Ch[sz]vez. Venezuelans, as Ch[sz]vez never tires of reminding them, are in the grip of an anti-American...

Grin and bear it.(Transylvania)
February 3, 2007... As my little car laboured around a bend in the snowy Carpathian logging road, a brown furry figure jumped out of the forest on all fours and made off in front of the car. It was, perhaps, a sign that I had been too long in the city that I...

Left out in the cold.(What's Left?)(Book review)
February 3, 2007... WHAT'S LEFT ? by Nick Cohen 4th Estate, [pounds sterling]12.99, pp. 405, ISBN 9780007229697 . [pounds sterling]10.39 (plus [pounds sterling]2.45 p&p) 0870 429 6655 A book about the failures of the Left in the last 28 years could have been...

Enlightenment a distant gleam.(The Writing on the Wall: China and the West in the 21st Century)(China Candid: The People on the People's Republic)(Book review)
February 3, 2007... THE WRITING ON THE WALL : CHINA AND THE WEST IN THE 21ST CENTURY by Will Hutton Little, Brown, [pounds sterling]20, pp. 431, ISBN 9780316730181 . [pounds sterling]16 (plus [pounds sterling]2.45 p&p) 0870 429 6655 CHINA CANDID : THE PEOPLE...

Virtually a kangaroo court.(Travesty: The Trail of Slobodan Milosevic and the Corruption of International Justice)(Book review)
February 3, 2007... TRAVESTY : THE TRIAL OF SLOBODAN MILOSEVIC AND THE CORRUPTION OF INTERNATIONAL JUSTICE by John Laughland Pluto Press, [pounds sterling]14.99, pp. 214, ISBN 9780745326368 . [pounds sterling]11.99 (plus [pounds sterling]2.45 p&p) 0870 429 6655...

Beautiful Victorian behemoth.(St. Pancras Station)(Book review)
February 3, 2007... ST PANCRAS STATION by Simon Bradley Profile, [pounds sterling]14.99, pp. 193, ISBN 1861979967 . [pounds sterling]11.99 (plus [pounds sterling]2.45 p&p) 0870 429 6655 It would take a heart of stone to contemplate St Pancras station and its...

For reasons of state.(Betrayal: France, the Arabs, and the Jews)(Book review)
February 3, 2007... BETRAYAL : FRANCE , THE ARABS AND THE JEWS by David Pryce-Jones Encounter Books, New York, [pounds sterling]13.99, pp. 170, ISBN 1594031517 France discovered the Arab world with Napoleon's ill-fated expedition to Egypt in 1798. If David...

Separation.(Poem)
February 3, 2007... Sometimes, in the night, sharing our bed I feel cage-restrained. I cannot stretch, or scratch, or swear at moths or mosquitoes looking for the light, or me. I cannot listen to the World Service, speak out loud or hum. And yet and yet,...

Now you see him, now you don't.(Trickster Travels: In Search of Leo Africanus, a Sixteenth-Century Muslim between Worlds)(Book review)
February 3, 2007... TRICKSTER TRAVELS : IN SEARCH OF LEO AFRICANUS , A SIXTEENTH -CENTURY MUSLIM BETWEEN WORLDS by Natalie Zemon Davies Faber, [pounds sterling]20, pp. 435, ISBN 9780571202560 . [pounds sterling]16 (plus [pounds sterling]2.45 p&p) 0870 429 6655 ...

Things falling apart.(Measuring Time)(Book review)
February 3, 2007... MEASURING TIME by Helon Habila Hamish Hamilton, [pounds sterling]16.99, pp. 383, ISBN 9780241141854 . [pounds sterling]13.59 (plus [pounds sterling]2.45 p&p) 0870 429 6655 Q: How to write imaginatively about the developing world? The...

When the judges got it right.(Rudyard Kipling)
February 3, 2007... In 1907 the Nobel Prize for Literature was for the first time awarded to an English-language writer: Kipling. It wasn't even then a choice that went down well with those whose opinions counted. 'The denizens of literary London, ' David Gilmour...

'Culture's still a low priority'.(Sir Nicholas Serota, Tate Gallery )(Interview)
February 3, 2007... For a hundred years or so, the director of the Tate Gallery has normally been a major figure in the art world. Sir Norman Reid, director in a dynamic period between 1964 and 1979, increased the Tate's exhibition space and acquired, for example,...

Charming the aristocracy.(exhibitions)
February 3, 2007... Canaletto in England Dulwich Picture Gallery, until 15 April Canaletto is one of the best-loved of foreigners who visited these shores and attempted to capture the English spirit through depictions of our countryside and buildings. London...

Ten for the road.(sound recordings)
February 3, 2007... Back in November, I wrote about the sad death of my old VW Passat on the way down to Dorset. It was gloomily pronounced on all sides to be irreparable, and the poor old thing languished in the car park outside Netherbury Village Hall before...

Classical influences.(jazz music)
February 3, 2007... At the turn of the 20th century, the classical tradition of Western music could look back on a continuous evolutionary cycle that stretched back to plainsong. But there was also a sense that this great tradition was reaching a dead end,...

All-purpose affair.(The Marriage of Figaro)(Opera review)
February 3, 2007... Carmen Royal Opera The Marriage of Figaro Coliseum The Royal Opera's new Carmen, which opened last month, is back with different singers in all the most important roles. The balance among the principals has changed and, rather...

Dench on top form.(Notes on a Scandal)(Movie review)
February 3, 2007... Notes on a Scandal 15, Nationwide Notes on a Scandal is a fairly nasty book and this is a fairly nasty film - very Patricia Highsmithian is the nearest I can get to it - but this does not mean you should deny yourselves the very great...

Something for nothing.(The Antiques Roadshow)(Jamie's Chef)(Bonkers)(Television program review)
February 3, 2007... I caught The Antiques Roadshow (BBC1, Sunday) almost by accident the other day. It was one of those moments when you're too lazy to turn the television off, you flip through the numbers on the remote, and there it is. Comfort viewing for Sunday...

Urban delights.(John Claudius Loudon, public parks)
February 3, 2007... For years I was lucky enough to live close to Brockwell Park in south London, between Brixton and Herne Hill, with a better view of St Paul's from the hill in the middle than from Hampstead, a nicer caff than in Kensington Gardens, and an...

Genetic advantage.(Nick Gifford, racehorse trainer)(Biography)
February 3, 2007... What makes a successful racehorse trainer? Patience and an eye for detail. Man management and a flair for publicity. But the right genes help, too, and there Nick Gifford, the handler of the first-class hurdling prospect Straw Bear, does have...

GetCarter.(Jimmy Carter's take on jews)(Viewpoint essay)
February 3, 2007... Gstaad A London friend has sent me a book whose subject caused a few faint complaints in the beginning but has now escalated to a full-scale furore, Jimmy Carter's Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid. Racist and anti-Semitic have been the...

Banal questions.(Gerald Brenan's travel writings)(Viewpoint essay)
February 3, 2007... Las Alpujarras In 1919 a young outer satellite of the Bloomsbury set called Gerald Brenan came to Spain looking for somewhere quiet to read and recover from the shellshock he'd sustained at the battles of Ypres and the Somme. He found a...

Love thy neighbourhood.(Viewpoint essay)
February 3, 2007... Last Sunday, while taking Buster for his late-night walk, I was stopped by a neighbour - name unknown - with what, on the face of it, seemed a friendly question. Why, she asked, did I not complain about the giant earth-moving machine which is...

RESTAURANTS.(Acorn House)(Restaurant review)
February 3, 2007... Acorn House is London's first truly environmentally sustainable restaurant, which is fine - restaurants are, on the whole, obscenely wasteful - but I would ask this: has it occurred to anyone that maybe the environment doesn't particularly wish...

Finding time.(Viewpoint essay)
February 3, 2007... One of the greatest clockmakers of all time was the Englishman Thomas Tompion (1639-1713), whose ravishing Mostyn clock can be seen in the British Museum. One of his pieces is starring in a selling exhibition of the golden age of English...

Flavour of the month.
February 3, 2007... Looking at some Chilean strawberries in Sainsbury's the other day, I was reminded of the Grimm fairy story 'The Three Dwarfs', in which the good and beautiful heroine is set an impossible task by her wicked stepmother - to find strawberries in...

The slow track.(travelling in train)(Travel narrative)
February 3, 2007... When a hobo dies after a lifetime riding the rail across America, his fellow hoboes say, 'He's gone west.' I could hardly have felt more alive as I went west from New York's Penn Station 2,500 miles across America, hunk of Emmenthal and 10...

HOTELS OF THE WEEK.(Directory)(Brief article)
February 3, 2007... THE PENINSULA CHIGAGO 108 East Superior Street, North Michigan Avenue, Chicago, Illinois 60611 Tel: (312) 337 2888 www. chicago. peninsula. com THE OXFORD HOTEL 1600 17th Street, Denver, Colorado 80202 Tel: (866) 654 6376 www....

Going Green?(Six nations tournament to begin)
February 3, 2007... Rugby union's Six Nations tournament begins this weekend with Ireland the soothsayers' hot fancy to achieve its first Grand Slam in all of 58 years and England inked in for the wooden spoon. I'd be mighty surprised if either forecast came to...

The cockpit of truth.(Lance Corporal's death breaks United States-United Kingdom's relations)
February 10, 2007... The tragic death in Iraq of Lance Corporal of Horse Matty Hull under US 'friendly fire' in March 2003 has become a bleak parable of the flaws at the heart of the US-UK 'special relationship'. Only now, and only thanks to a leak to the Sun of a...

DIARY.(Diary entry)
February 10, 2007... Since my two children have dispersed to Hollywood and gap-year Sydney, I spend a great deal of time at home with the individual who needs me most: my house - mean, moody, magnificent, prone to upsets if left. Its tanks conveniently overflowed...

Lords reform will not be enough to wipe away the shame of loans for peerages.(White Paper on House of Lords reform)
February 10, 2007... It is a strange form of bombardment. Days, sometimes weeks, can pass without any movement from the Metropolitan Police and it seems as if the all-clear is about to be sounded above the Downing Street bunker. Then, from nowhere, comes...

THE SPECTATOR'S NOTES.(Alan Johnson and Harold Wilson's educational reform)
February 10, 2007... At the same time as it tries to loosen things up, the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority is told by the Education Secretary, Alan Johnson, that schools must put more emphasis on 'global warming, the British slave trade and the anti-slavery...

DIARY OF A NOTTING HILL NOBODY.(Diary entry)
February 10, 2007... MONDAY What a morning! Was having coffee with Jed's new PA, Janice. Lovely lady. V spiritual - although some might say a bit severelooking with the shaved head. Anyway, as Nigel says, she's 'taken a shine to me'. She tells me things that are...

If bird flu spreads to humans, will you have a place in the bio-bunker?(pandemic control)
February 10, 2007... In its early days, New Labour was likened to a 'big tent', in which there was room not just for the party's traditional supporters but just about anybody else too. There is one government tent, however, in which there is certainly not yet room...

Liberate schools and spark a revolution.(educational reform)
February 10, 2007... Belvedere School and Shorefields School in Liverpool are just half a mile away from each other but educationally they are worlds apart. The first is a private girls' school where 100 per cent of pupils get five good GCSE passes. The second is a...

Ignore the promises:test their characters.(Gordon Brown and David Cameron's political campaigns)
February 10, 2007... Gordon Brown used an interview earlier this year to give us a glimpse of what might be in store for the nation - and the world - once he gathers in those reins of power that have so far eluded his grasp. Ignore almost everything he has said....

Beware the Taleban of tolerance.(gay adoption)
February 10, 2007... The temper of the debate on gay adoption and the Catholic Church has been astonishing. I have never seen such a concentrated display of anti-Catholic venom as I did from Westminster and what used to be called Fleet Street. Read the articles on...

Sorry, but not all faith schools are the same in a Christian society.
February 10, 2007... At last, a British school where pupils are inculcated in a strict moral code, but also taught to think for themselves. Get your kids' names down for the King Fahad Academy in Acton, west London, quick. It's a Muslim faith school, as you...

It's about the child.(gay adoption)(Brief article)
February 10, 2007... From John Parfitt Sir: Matthew Parris should do better than his elegant nonsense about so-called gay adoption (Another voice, 3 February). Until the inclusiveness lobby turned the word 'discriminating' into a boo-word, it was a compliment,...

Who's this professor?(Letter to the editor)
February 10, 2007... From Tom Burkard Sir: However much educational standards have deteriorated in recent years, it seems that editorial standards have fallen even further ('Look back in anger', 3 February). Hansard reveals that only 6.9 per cent of our pupils...

My money's on Mitt.(Letter to the editor)
February 10, 2007... From Michael R.V. Whitman Sir: James Forsyth says that either John McCain - bound for ever to the Iraq debacle and a major player in the late and unlamented Monkey Congress - or Rudy Giuliani - pro-abortion, anti-gun, pro-gay marriage - will be...

The death of Planet Earth.
February 10, 2007... From Nick Reeves Sir: Charles Moore is wrong to suggest that environmentalists are predicting the end of Planet Earth unless we act now on climate change (The Spectator's Notes, 3 February). If the planet dies, that will likely be for other...

A time-honoured trade.(Letter to the editor)
February 10, 2007... From David Roberts Sir: What's all the fuss about selling honours? They've always been for sale. In The Inimitable Jeeves (1924) Bingo's uncle is raised to the peerage. 'A gracious Sovereign has been pleased to bestow on me a signal mark of his...

Just blame the Zionists.(Letter to the editor)
February 10, 2007... From Alexander Massey Sir: Israel guilty of destabilising 'not just the Middle East but much of the rest of the world' (Jonathan Sumption, Books, 3 February)? Sure, and global warming is all the Zionists' fault as well. Alexander Massey...

Blast from the 1960s.(Letter to the editor)
February 10, 2007... From Sir Tim Rice Sir: I was thrilled beyond measure to see a cartoon in this week's Spectator which could only be appreciated by those familiar with the Marcels' 1961 No. 1 hit 'Blue Moon'. That was a terrific year for popular music and I hope...

The last of the City's frequent flyers.(Win Bischoff, Robert Swannell and David Challen of Schroders PLC and Citigroup)
February 10, 2007... When Win Bischoff and his colleagues Robert Swannell and David Challen threw a party last month to celebrate 100 years of working together at Schroders and Citigroup, it was quite a bash. Not only did it draw the cream of FTSE-100 chiefs - Sir...

Antiques: better value than Ikea.
February 10, 2007... Not many people seem to realise this, but it's cheaper in the long run to buy a solid carved mahogany antique chest of drawers than a modern pine one from Ikea. Without having to search far, you can get a beautiful Victorian chest of drawers in...

Steel and socialism give way to sex and shopping in the post-Blunkett era.(David Blunkett)
February 10, 2007... 'Blunkett Is Blind' screamed a pertinent piece of graffiti in Sheffield city centre in the 1980s. This wasn't just a statement of the bleeding obvious, as a London cabbie might say, but a condemnation of David Blunkett's stewardship as leader...

Intensity, not force.(Richter's Scale: Measure of an Earthquake, Measure of a Man)(Book review)
February 10, 2007... RICHTER'S SCALE : MEASURE OF AN EARTHQUAKE , MEASURE OF A MAN by Susan Elizabeth Hough Princeton, [pounds sterling]17.95, pp. 337, ISBN 9780691128078 . [pounds sterling]14.36 (plus [pounds sterling]2.45 p&p) 0870 429 6655 Charles Richter,...

A selection of recent paperbacks.(Brief article)
February 10, 2007... Non-fiction: Alec Douglas-Home by D. R. Thorpe (Politicos, [pounds sterling]14.99) Penguin Special by Jeremy Lewis (Penguin, [pounds sterling]9.99) Generals by Mark Urban (Faber, [pounds sterling]8.99) Luftwaffe Letters by Edward Thorpe...

A cure for optimism.(With Vine-Leaves in His Hair)(Book review)
February 10, 2007... WITH VINE -LEAVES IN HIS HAIR by Paul Binding Norvik Press, [pounds sterling]14.95, pp. 230, ISBN 187004164X www. norvikpress. com email: norvik. press@uae. ac. uk Henrik Ibsen's fictional world of marital breakdown and sexual hypocrisy in...

The day before yesterday.(Wintering)(Book review)
February 10, 2007... WINTERING by Derek Johns Potobello, [pounds sterling]7.99, pp. 199, ISBN 9781846270222 . [pounds sterling]6.39 (plus [pounds sterling]2.45 p&p) 0870 429 6655 Wintering, a good and concisely written first novel by Derek Johns, reads like a...

Shooting the breeze for free.(The Paris Review Interviews, vol. 1)(Book review)
February 10, 2007... THE PARIS REVIEW INTERVIEWS : VOLUME Iedited by Philip Gourevitch Canongate, 14.99, pp. 510, ISBN 9781841959252 . [pounds sterling]11.99 (plus [pounds sterling]2.45 p&p) 0870 429 6655 The Paris Review came into being in 1953, when a group...

A choice of crime novels.(Natasha Cooper's "A Greater Evil")(Ann Cleeves' "Hidden Depths")(Barbara Nadel's "A Passion for Killing")(Book review)
February 10, 2007... Natasha Cooper's heroine, Trish Maguire, is a barrister who subverts the stereotypes, an outsider whose troubled background sometimes gives her more in common with clients than colleagues. At the start of A Greater Evil (Simon & Schuster,...

More than journalism.(kenneth Tynan: Theatre Writings)(Kenneth Tynan: Profiles)(Book review)
February 10, 2007... KENNETH TYNAN : THEATRE WRITINGS edited by Dominic Shellard Nick Hern Books, [pounds sterling]20, pp. 278, ISBN 9781854590503 . [pounds sterling]16.79 (plus [pounds sterling]2.45 p&p) 0870 429 6655 KENNETH TYNAN : PROFILES edited by...

A monochrome landscape.(Afterwards)(Book review)
February 10, 2007... AFTERWARDS by Rachel Seiffert Heinemann, [pounds sterling]14.99, pp. 327, ISBN 978043401186X . [pounds sterling]11.99 (plus [pounds sterling]2.45 p&p) 0870 429 6655 Alice, the result of a teenage mistake, was brought up largely by her...

The dangerous edge of things.(Risky Business: People,Pastimes, Poker and Books)(Book review)
February 10, 2007... RISKY BUSINESS : PEOPLE, PASTIMES, POKER AND BOOKS by Al Alvarez Bloomsbury, [pounds sterling]12.99, pp. 409, ISBN 9780747587446 . [pounds sterling]10.39 (plus [pounds sterling]2.45 p&p) 0870 429 6655 If you are English and love the poetry...

Unfinished Painting.
February 10, 2007... The artist Fothergill; the scene an Essex landscape. Tall trees framing the fields, a church beyond. And riding towards the painter on a sturdy cob A country figure followed by vestigial shapes. The foreground grass growing from...

'Time is eating away at one's life'.(Maggi Hambling, painter)(Biography)
February 10, 2007... I'm talking to Maggi Hambling in the downstairs studio of her south London home, because her beautifully light upstairs painting space is being given a new coat of white paint, the first for years. She always says that if she ever comes to sell...

Poetry and music.
February 10, 2007... The great lyric poets of the English language wrote - and, I hope, are still writing - words which have their own melodic quality, cadences which lure composers to add music to them. Shakespeare, Herrick, Blake, Tennyson, Burns, Yeats have been...

Follow your muse.(Norah Jones )
February 10, 2007... How pleasant it has been to hear songs from the new Norah Jones album on the radio these past few weeks. Soft, deftly performed, vaguely jazzy in that way that everyone likes, these latest songs sound almost completely indistinguishable from...

Double riches.(children music operas)
February 10, 2007... Il Trovatore Children's Music Workshop; Royal Opera House Ihad the unusual opportunity of seeing two productions of Il Trovatore in one day last week, the circumstances of them about as contrasting as could be when they were within a couple of...

Tales from Trinity.(Trinity College)(Column)
February 10, 2007... It seems that the fuss which surrounded the appointment of Stephen Layton as organist and choirmaster of Trinity College, Cambridge some 15 months ago has not gone away. Rumour and Lunchtime O'Boulez have it that some of the fellows of Trinity...